Sunday, September 07, 2008

Gene Healy speaks about the cult of the Presidency










I'm about half-finished with The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power, a book which drives home the message that presidents, when they can, will abuse unchecked power and thus should not be allowed to abuse such power (i.e. should be held within Constitutionally prescribed limits.) As you'll see from the lecture, Healy argues that our cultural expectation of the President to carry out all the functions of the government and perform quasi-magical feats of accomplishment (e.g. defeating Evil or winning a "War on Poverty") has hollowed out our democracy.

No comments: