I think that's a load of baloney. The Dems always do the "I'm just a smol bean President" thing and I'm so sick of it. It's giving everyone brain worms. Let me spit some facts:
Every single US war since WWII has been an Executive-initiated "police action." The President has the authority to implement Antitrust action. (This was even done as recently as in 1998 with Microsoft.) The president has the authority to pursue action on white-collar crimes with laws already on the books (that aren't being enforced). Last but not least, the president has a very public platform they can use to appeal to the American public and shame Congress into line. There's a shit ton of stuff a motivated President can do. They just choose not to.
there's assuming that the president is powerless, and assuming that he's all powerful. You're doing the latter. The president is beholden to private business interests, so is congress. If they abuse the power capital gives them they will be removed and limits will be put in place to prevent that abuse from happening again. It took the world wars to codify into law the two term limit after Roosevelt broke tradition, it took however many dead presidents before Kennedy to properly codify a line of succession upon the death of the president. We've already had two presidents in our lifetime win by electoral college, I'm sure capital is getting around to that next.
In very recent memory, Trump had the power to pass a whole bunch of trade tariffs on China, India, Mexico, etc. while he was in office - which is a pretty darn major economic action.
Do you think Congress wanted that? Did he have to get legislative approval? Do you think that made (transnational) capital happy? Did congress restrict the ability of future presidents to take similar actions in future? (No.)
Also, the whole "let's send COVID relief direct payments thing," has been an executive-initiated program each time. Again, another pretty major action that runs contrary to interests of capital. (Though for this, the Paycheck Protection Plan/COVID business grants were a larger carve-out for businesses.)
I think that's a load of baloney. The Dems always do the "I'm just a smol bean President" thing and I'm so sick of it. It's giving everyone brain worms. Let me spit some facts: Every single US war since WWII has been an Executive-initiated "police action." The President has the authority to implement Antitrust action. (This was even done as recently as in 1998 with Microsoft.) The president has the authority to pursue action on white-collar crimes with laws already on the books (that aren't being enforced). Last but not least, the president has a very public platform they can use to appeal to the American public and shame Congress into line. There's a shit ton of stuff a motivated President can do. They just choose not to.
there's assuming that the president is powerless, and assuming that he's all powerful. You're doing the latter. The president is beholden to private business interests, so is congress. If they abuse the power capital gives them they will be removed and limits will be put in place to prevent that abuse from happening again. It took the world wars to codify into law the two term limit after Roosevelt broke tradition, it took however many dead presidents before Kennedy to properly codify a line of succession upon the death of the president. We've already had two presidents in our lifetime win by electoral college, I'm sure capital is getting around to that next.
In very recent memory, Trump had the power to pass a whole bunch of trade tariffs on China, India, Mexico, etc. while he was in office - which is a pretty darn major economic action.
Do you think Congress wanted that? Did he have to get legislative approval? Do you think that made (transnational) capital happy? Did congress restrict the ability of future presidents to take similar actions in future? (No.)
Also, the whole "let's send COVID relief direct payments thing," has been an executive-initiated program each time. Again, another pretty major action that runs contrary to interests of capital. (Though for this, the Paycheck Protection Plan/COVID business grants were a larger carve-out for businesses.)