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 murder 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