The President - Power and the president

well i think %uh i think that people invest far too much %uh they look to the presidency for things %uh it was never intended to to provide %uh and that no office really could %uh we look to the president in in a way that %uh you know british people do not look to no one expected tony blair %uh to %uh save everyone's soul %uh to heal spiritual malaise within the country and bind us all together into i so i i i think that people expect %uh too much of the presidency and the candidates you know i i started out i think by talking a little bit about how the candidates talk about the office but the candidates talk this way for a reason so when Barack Obama %uh goes to south carolina as he did %um months back and gives a speech where he says I believe that with the right presidential leadership we can create a kingdom here on earth he's talking this way because people actually believe that the presidency or at least in in some sense believe that the president can %uh heal all the nations wounds teach your children well that the %uh the president is the person in the hillary clinton commercial who's going to %uh well you know answer the phone at three a_m_ to keep your children safe from harm the distance we've traveled from the modest aspirations that the %uh that the framers had for the office has pretty much guaranteed that there be an unhealthy concentration of power in the office and the fact that people look to the presidency to fulfil all these needs %uh means that the incentive of the %uh person in the office is going to be to seek more power I can give you one i think pretty good example of that %um just briefly is the aftermath of hurricane katrina as somebody put it in the aftermath to katrina the %uh same people the same half of the country that had been complaining for years about george w_ bush being a dictator were suddenly screaming bloody *** because he was failing to do %uh in the aftermath of katrina a sufficiently convincing impersonation of a dictator and none of this is to deny that the federal government deserves plenty of blame for the inept response to the to the that catastrophe but when you listen to the debates over it in the aftermath it became clear that the blame was going far beyond what fema was actually legally responsible for and people sort of expected the president to swoop in like a superhero and %uh take care of this problem well predictably george w_ bush went to %uh congress and started lobbying for %uh a law that would make it for easier for the president to %uh take military command of a disaster area and declare martial law and use %uh troops and policing situations which the posse comitatus act and the insurrection act restrain him from doing and he got that he got that power %uh in %uh the fall of two thousand six and for a couple years he the president was could have been the potential commander of a federal war on hurricanes and had enormous power to use standing armies at home the provision was actually repealed quietly %uh thanks to %uh %uh senator patrick leahy in january %um but it but it's but i i think it's a good example of how %uh the expectations of people have of what the office should be capable of lead directly to a concentration of power in the executive branch