Us Presidency Quotes

“Can any American child grow up to be president? Probably not, however fond we might be of the idea. Perhaps a better question is: what well-adjusted tyke would want the job?”
― Gene Healy, The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power

“There was a revealing moment in the first presidential debate in September 2008, moderator Jim Lehrer asked the candidates, ‘‘Are you willing to acknowledge, both of this financial crisis is going to affect the way you rule the country as president of the
States?’’Neither McCain nor Obama objected to Lehrer’s phrasing. Both, it seemed,
perfectly comfortable with the idea that it’s the president’s job to ‘‘rule the country.”
― Gene Healy, The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power

“Over and over again, we begin by looking to the president as the solution to all our problems, and we end up believing he’s the source of all our problems. If history is any guide, when Obama fails to fully heal our financial troubles, stop the oceans’ rise, and rescue us from spiritual malaise, his hope-addled rhetoric will seem all the more grating, and the public will increasingly come to see him as the source of all American woes. As his popularity dwindles, many of
Obama’s supporters will view attacks on him through the prism of race, forgetting or ignoring the fact that nearly every president eventually morphs from superhero to scapegoat in the public mind. Race will take on undue relevance because the presidency is far more powerful and far more important than it ought to be.
Perhaps, then, we ought to rethink what we ask of”
― Gene Healy, The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power