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Comment by otterley | Hacker News Reader

Character matters a lot. Our leaders should be moral as well as financial leaders.

As for the president, you give that position way too much credit (or, inversely, blame). They have no authority or control over gas prices, supply chain issues, or autocrats invading other countries. They’re not God; they’re just doing a job described in Article II of the Constitution. Republican or Democrat; it doesn’t matter.

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> They have no authority or control over gas prices, supply chain issues, or autocrats invading other countries.

They may not have direct control... but nobody is arguing the President literally said "supply chain issues, start existing!" or failed to say "gas prices, you better not rise!" while waiving his finger.

Presidents absolutely have indirect control over all of those things though, and more.

Suppose you were President. How would you control those things, and with what authority? And how would you prevent unintended consequences that are worse than the problems you set out to solve?

You don’t have to answer this question, but it’s a really useful thought exercise. Leadership is much harder than people often realize.

I would probably use Trump’s playbook during his administration as a guide since it resulted in low inflation, low gas prices, no supply chain issues, a Putin kept in check, etc. In contrast, the current President definitely appears to be finding leadership harder than he realized despite his 50 year career in politics.

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