People think, quite a bit according to the results of this online poll.
Large majorities of voters believe the president has considerable sway on a range of big issues such as inflation, interest rates, the federal deficit, taxes and more. Fully three-quarters believe the president has at least some influence over health care costs, for example. Sixty-nine percent can see the president making gasoline prices go up or down.
The problem is, it's just not true. Not only is government limited, the president heads only one of three branches which check and balance each other. Congress actually sets policy, and limits on government allow many decisions to be made by the free market.
It's not surprising that people have high expectations of what presidents can do given the amount of time we spend we spend focusing on him and the election to the office. But presidential power, with just a few areas of exception, is very limited. Perhaps the cynicism people feel about government has less to do with government's failures than with ignorance about its actual design and purpose.
That's why we have this class I suppose.
