Are U.S. Presidents Lame?

Untangling Whether the White House Has Too Much Power—Or Too Little

It’s routinely called the most powerful job in the world, but the U.S. presidency can seem astonishingly impotent. Ideas proposed in the State of the Union go nowhere once they reach Congress. Deals that are negotiated get killed. On the other hand, when a president wishes to launch a war, very few obstacles stand in the way. If the president wants to lard government agencies like the Justice Department with partisan hires, then only outright scandal will prevent it. So which is it: weak or strong? In advance of the …