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Does America Need a President?
The New York Times ^ | July 5, 2024 | Ross Douthat

Posted on 07/06/2024 9:44:24 AM PDT by MinorityRepublican

As the belief that Joe Biden is fully equipped to be president dissolves like mist on a Delaware morning, some of his defenders have fallen back on the idea that the American presidency is not really a man but a team.

“I would take Joe Biden on his worst day at age 86 — so long as he has people around him like Avril Haines, Samantha Power, Gina Raimondo supporting him — over Donald Trump any day,” a former homeland security secretary, Jeh Johnson, said on MSNBC a few days ago. Don’t think of this as the Biden presidency, in other words; think of it as the Biden-Raimondo-Haines-Power presidency (tack on a dozen more names if you like), in which if the central pillar weakens, the support structure can still hold things up.

From there, you could take the relatively mild position that one lesson of both the Biden years and Trump’s first term is that the executive branch can often work around a president who isn’t quite up to the demands of the job. Or you could take the sweeping position that the government as a corporate entity almost always works independently of the occupant of the Oval Office and so an increasingly incapacitated chief executive who does what the process tells him to do would just be business as usual for the ship of state.

The mild position clearly has some truth to it: The everyday functioning of the executive branch does seem more independent of the president’s capacities than it appeared to be before January 2017. I also think the sweeping argument gets at an important reality of governmental power: Conservatives especially have long understood the limited ability of presidents to fully impose their authority on the bureaucracy they nominally lead.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events; Political Humor/Cartoons; Politics/Elections; US: New York
KEYWORDS: avrilhaines; babylontimes; biden; cnbc; deepstate; dnctalkingpoint; dnctalkingpoints; fakenews; ginaraimondo; jehjohnson; mediawingofthednc; msdnc; mslsd; msnbc; nbc; newyork; newyorkcity; newyorkslimes; newyorktimes; nobrainscollectively; obama; obamalegacy; partisanmediashill; partisanmediashills; pmsnbc; presidency; president; presstitutes; ronklain; rossdouthat; samanthapower; smearmachine; tds
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To: MinorityRepublican

Arrogant stupidity runs strong in Manhattan.


41 posted on 07/06/2024 10:40:35 AM PDT by Chgogal (To paraphrase Biden: You vote Democrat? Then you ain't smart.)
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To: MinorityRepublican

There’s enough spin in this story to induce vertigo.


42 posted on 07/06/2024 10:48:58 AM PDT by alancarp (George Orwell was an optimist.)
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To: workerbee

Have a politburo instead, with a chairman, who sends anyone who crosses him to Alaska for hard labor. Yes. That would be perrrrfect./s


43 posted on 07/06/2024 10:57:53 AM PDT by Eleutheria5 (Every Goliath has his David. Child in need of a CGM system. https://gofund.me/6452dbf1. )
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To: joethedrummer
Because when the populace is essentially dishonest and unholy, it's all we have to choose from and with the general unholy and dishonest mindset, it all seems so perfectly normal.

Pray for revival in America.

44 posted on 07/06/2024 10:58:11 AM PDT by knarf (BEC)
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To: doc maverick

“ When Trump wins…”

The next 4-5 months could be the most intense the world has seen for a long time, especially since they’ve brain washed their worshipers into believing Trump is “literally Hitler”, and there nothing should be off the table to stop him, and US.


45 posted on 07/06/2024 11:35:12 AM PDT by Dogbert41 (“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” -Matthew 5:9)
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To: Qwapisking
...why do modernistas always seem to believe they are smarter than....

Maybe because they don't know the difference between "proscribe" and "prescribe"?

46 posted on 07/06/2024 11:49:24 AM PDT by 4Runner
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To: MinorityRepublican

There is absolutely, positively no limit to the depths of depravity, illogic, and just plain slime that those in the left will descend to. And the spearhead of slime is the journalists. You know, the folks who failed their “studies” exams and had to take a subject requiring even less ability.


47 posted on 07/06/2024 11:52:25 AM PDT by Da Coyote
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To: null and void; aragorn; EnigmaticAnomaly; kalee; Kale; AZ .44 MAG; Baynative; bgill; bitt; ...

p


48 posted on 07/06/2024 11:54:41 AM PDT by bitt (<img src=' 'width=30%>)
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To: ChildOfThe60s

Right...the bureaucracy RULES!!!


49 posted on 07/06/2024 12:22:29 PM PDT by goodnesswins (Climate cultists think we should go back to the goo"d times when people starved)
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To: MinorityRepublican

“Does America Need a President?”

Yes, but not a King Joe.


50 posted on 07/06/2024 12:29:12 PM PDT by antidemoncrat
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To: MinorityRepublican

YES, and whoever it is MUST BE ABLE TO BALANCE A FRICKING CHECKING ACCOUNT !!!

The rest of the plan should be very close to what President Donald J. Trump does to get the rest of the World to pay their fair share without the United States providing the money to do so.

The People need to be sure to never let even one more deep stater or demonratcommieblmantifaterrorscumfeminazipedophilegoatraper get into the Office !!!


51 posted on 07/06/2024 12:38:42 PM PDT by mabarker1 ( (Congress- the opposite of PROGRESS!!! A fraud, a hypocrite, a liar. I'm a member of Congress!!!)
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To: SPDSHDW

You’re right. And there aren’t enough of them. They’re outnumbered.

And we can’t forget County Sheriffs. We know which side most will be on. And they can deputize.


52 posted on 07/06/2024 12:42:33 PM PDT by laplata (They want each crisis to take the greatest toll possible.)
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To: MinorityRepublican
We all knew this was coming.

"It doesn't matter if Biden is riddled with dementia and lying on his death bed, he's not running anything as it is! He's got a team of professionals who are making all of the executive decisions. Let them do their jobs!"

53 posted on 07/06/2024 12:42:50 PM PDT by Drew68
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To: RoosterRedux

With a team approach to the presidency, impeachments would impeach all of the team!


54 posted on 07/06/2024 1:20:59 PM PDT by 17th Miss Regt ( )
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To: MinorityRepublican
...some of his defenders have fallen back on the idea that the American presidency is not really a man but a team.

Bernie was the first to come up with that idea - an idea THAT'S NOT in the Constitution.

Like most left wing extremists who 'cry for the great Constitution' when it comes right down to it, they don't support any of the ideas in it.

Sorry liberal traitors - that's NOT our system - we elect a President.

55 posted on 07/06/2024 1:36:07 PM PDT by GOPJ (Biden can READ a speech IF written for him. Take the teleprompter away and Biden's a babbling idiot.)
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To: MinorityRepublican

What kind of an idiot would ask a question like that, other that a leftist activist bent on destroying our Constitution?


56 posted on 07/06/2024 1:47:10 PM PDT by higgmeister (In the Shadow of The Big Chicken! )
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To: MinorityRepublican

Jeh Johnson. Spit.

His momma couldn’t spell “Jay.”


57 posted on 07/06/2024 1:56:48 PM PDT by july4thfreedomfoundation (Disband and Defund the putrid FBI. America does not need an out of control Gestapo)
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To: MinorityRepublican

An oligarchy is working just fine for the dems...


58 posted on 07/06/2024 1:59:57 PM PDT by who knows what evil? (Hospitals are the most dangerous place on Earth! Dr. David Williams)
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To: Tommy Revolts

A communist harpy politburo


59 posted on 07/06/2024 2:16:13 PM PDT by ChildOfThe60s ("If you can remember the 60s....you weren't really there")
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To: MinorityRepublican
"Does America Need a President?"

........ Ya .... Well it's kinda one of those pesky little requirements laid out in the Constitution. Perhaps the American People need to do a little more soul searching and reasearch into the type of people that are installed as candidates and elected to the Presidency.

.

60 posted on 07/06/2024 2:44:40 PM PDT by R_Kangel ("A nation of sheep will beget a nation ruled by wolves")
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