{"id":17895,"date":"2016-11-10T13:54:20","date_gmt":"2016-11-10T13:54:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=17895"},"modified":"2016-11-10T13:54:20","modified_gmt":"2016-11-10T13:54:20","slug":"no-president-can-act-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=17895","title":{"rendered":"No president can act ‘alone’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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“I alone can fix it,” Donald J. Trump told us while he accepted the Republican Party’s presidential nomination this past summer.<\/p>\n

Surely you remember that pearl of wisdom.<\/p>\n

The comment revealed a tremendous ignorance of how the presidency works and how the individual who holds the office is supposed to conduct the nation’s business.<\/p>\n

Did it matter to American voters who this week elected a new president? Not in the least.<\/p>\n

The very same ignorant GOP nominee won the election and today is going to meet with the man he will succeed as president. Perhaps the incumbent, Barack H. Obama, can remind the new guy of a concept that appears foreign to him: teamwork.<\/p>\n

The president-elect is going to get a serious crash course in civics as he prepares to\u00a0assume the first political\u00a0office he’s ever sought.<\/p>\n

The founders devised a system of government that requires compromise among those who run it. Over time since the founding of the republic, we developed political parties.\u00a0The system is now run by people representing two major political organizations: the Democratic and Republican\u00a0parties. They differ on policy and principle.<\/p>\n

The trick, then,\u00a0becomes at times dicey. Politicians on both sides of the divide need to find some common ground to fix the problems that confront them. Sometimes they succeed; sometimes they fail. As President Obama learned early in his administration, cooperation\u00a0wasn’t always a given\u00a0as he reached out to Republicans to find solutions to the serious problems afflicting the nation when he took office.<\/p>\n

The Senate GOP leader, Mitch McConnell, laid down the marker early in Obama’s administration by saying his\u00a0No. 1 priority would be to\u00a0make Barack Obama a “one-term president.” It didn’t work out for McConnell.<\/p>\n

Still, the new president enters this strange\u00a0new world (for\u00a0him, at least) with\u00a0some kind of notion that\u00a0“I alone” can repair what he believes is wrong with the\u00a0nation.<\/p>\n

He’s got\u00a0535 individuals on Capitol Hill — many of whom have egos that match the new president’s — who\u00a0will have\u00a0different views of\u00a0what needs to be done. \u00a0Moreover, they\u00a0wield collectively<\/em> just as much power as the individual who sits in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n

Lesson No. 1 is as clear as it gets. Effective governance requires<\/em> teamwork, Mr. President-elect.<\/p>\n\n

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“I alone can fix it,” Donald J. Trump told us while he accepted the Republican Party’s presidential nomination this past summer. Surely you remember that pearl of wisdom. The comment revealed a tremendous ignorance of how the presidency works and how the individual who holds the office is supposed to conduct the nation’s business. Did … Continue reading No president can act ‘alone’<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[540,849,1337,1424,3099,3907],"class_list":["post-17895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-capitol-hill","tag-democratic-party","tag-donald-trump","tag-mitch-mcconnell","tag-republican-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17895"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17897,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17895\/revisions\/17897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}