Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

With all due respect, I think your grasp of American politics is quite weak. The POTUS has immense power, not just in theory (e.g. the ability to single-handedly launch nukes and basically end the world) but also in practice.

For one, he or she can nominate Supreme Court judges. This alone is huge, considering the SC is the final arbiter in the most important conflicts in the nation.

Aside from that, he or she can issue Executive Orders, which "have significant influence over the internal affairs of government, deciding how and to what degree legislation will be enforced, dealing with emergencies, waging wars, and in general fine-tuning policy choices in the implementation of broad statutes."[1]

The POTUS can also veto legislation passed by Congress. Historically, Congress has been able to override these vetoes only 7% of the time[2], which means the POTUS has a serious amount of influence in the direction the country goes in as well.

And of course, he or she is also the Commander in Chief of the world's most powerful military, and the country's supreme representative in foreign affairs.

Bottom line: POTUS is much more than a "punching bag."

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order_(United_States...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veto#United_States

> With all due respect, I think your grasp of American politics is quite weak.

Personal swipes, which this is, aren't allowed in HN comments.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14317152 and marked it off-topic.

POTUS has great power relative to any other singular person in the world. But relative to the total power exercised by the government, they have little (especially with regards to domestic policy). Trump's ability to actually "drain the swamp" is extremely limited, unless he pulls off an unprecedented and insane power grab. Yes, he can tinker with things, and those tinkerings will impact millions of people, but his ability actually bring back jobs to the rust belt, fix the economy, fix healthcare, make Washington accountable, etc, are all extremely limited.

Aside from that, he or she can issue Executive Orders, which "have significant influence over the internal affairs of government, deciding how and to what degree legislation will be enforced, dealing with emergencies, waging wars, and in general fine-tuning policy choices in the implementation of broad statutes."

Except that when those orders go to far against the wishes of the permanent government, the orders get blocked by the courts.

The issue is that it takes virtual all of a president's political capital to fight the permanent government (the bureaucracy, the courts, academia, the credentialed media, the party apparatus). So while in theory they have quite a bit of authority, if they wish to use that authority in a way that goes against the interests of the permanent government, they will find themselves in a huge battle. They can win at most, maybe one or two of these battles a term, and only these in a limited way.

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