The idea that any of our presidents ever actually “ran the country” should actually be completely unacceptable. You think farmers can run an entire country? How about actors? Failsons? Sex pests? None of these people should be “running the country”. The country has a massive bureaucracy running it and the president is filling a specific role of making judgement calls and tweaking the roster of bureaucrats
My bad, I guess I should have written a 5000 word essay detailing the intricate workings of the executive branch instead of a simple shorthand most people readily understand.
I’m glad to hear the president isn’t actually important to the day to day operation of the executive branch. I guess I can stop caring who even gets elected.
This but unironically. The actually important roles of the executive have been divorced entirely from the vagaries of democracy (foreign and monetary policy) via the Fed and the intelligence apparatus. The machine is far too complex for an individual to understand let alone control, so these guys form cabinets of ghouls that basically tell the president what to do, and if he doesn’t, well… ask JFK.
Domestic policy is another story but even there the two parties are remarkably close, if you pay attention to actions and not rhetoric. Especially now with the 6-3 court it pretty much couldn’t matter less, anything that would actually help people is DOA