The Triumph Of Magical Thinking

Many of the posts on The Portal document the absurdity of politics and how the president must endure much of the blame for what ails us, fairly or not. Jonathan Chait sums up this theme nicely: "This morning, listening to Diane Rehm, I heard the host ask her guest what President Obama should do to fix the ailing economy. Her guest expert tried to answer, but did not point out that any proposal to address the economy would require passage by the House and Senate. It struck me, again, that our political discourse is consumed by magical thinking. ... Part of the issue here is the cult of the presidency. We hold the president responsible for everything that happens. The notion that the president and both houses of Congress must agree on most actions in instinctively dissatisfying. And so we think of every problem as a question of 'what should the president do.' Layered on top of that is a failure to recognize the deep-seated disagreement between Obama and the Republicans over what we should do."