Barack Obama, Post-Partisan, Meets Washington Gridlock
“Yet our political system was designed to be infuriating. As George Edwards notes in his study of Presidents as facilitators, the American system ‘is too complicated, power too decentralized, and interests too diverse for one person, no matter how extraordinary, to dominate.’ Obama, like many Presidents, came to office talking like a director. But he ended up governing like a facilitator, which is what the most successful Presidents have always done. Even Lincoln famously admitted, ‘I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events controlled me.’”
