Jonathan Bernstein: “The most important thing to remember is that while presidents are surely the single most important players in the U.S. political system, that’s all they are — single players. Even the most successful and influential presidents have limits on what they can do to influence Congress, their party, the courts, the bureaucracy, interest groups, state and local governments, private businesses, foreign governments and more. Evaluations that ignore the context that presidents work in, including the constraints they face, are useless…”
“A second caution is to be sure that any evaluation is clear about the differences between the president, the presidency and the larger political system. Former President Donald Trump was an extreme case of a leader who often received credit or blame for actions taken by executive branch actors that he had little or nothing to do with.”
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