The structure of the US government has an unusually high number of veto points. Presidents have, as opposed to similar positions in other countries, much less power to push their agenda. People who don't understand that change comes slowly in the US, and requires serious organization to push through the house and senate, are being silly and simultaneously sabotaging their ostensible goals. viz Obama supporters not voting in off-presidential year elections and hence crippling his ability to push legislation.

> The structure of the US government has an unusually high number of veto points. Presidents have, as opposed to similar positions in other countries, much less power to push their agenda.

Actually the opposite is true. In many (Western) countries the head of state has zero actual power. The US president has some actual power, e.g. limited veto right on bills.

You need to compare the US president by the similarly positioned person in each country. E.g. in France it's the president, in the UK and Germany the chancellor, in Slovenia the prime minister (in Germany and Slovenia the president is powerless).

I wouldn't call the German president completely powerless. They can veto laws that seem unconstitutional (and this was done multiple times in the past). In case of war they play an important role. Their speeches often have large Impact.

But compared to other countries that's still relatively few powers.

President is far more akin to Prime Minister in the UK than chancellor, although in some ways I suppose not since the president is not a member of either house and rarely speaks/debates there.

Also the power of Veto is one thing - but the power only to maintain the status quo is a pretty limiting thing.

Oops... I guess I confused Cameron and Osborne. You're right, Prime Minister is the one!

> People who don't understand that change comes slowly in the US, and requires serious organization to push through the house and senate...

A lot of people new to the US political process (that is, get consistently involved beyond simply voting, even more involved than voting in primaries), do not understand the slow pace of change is a deliberate feature designed-in from the start, not a bug. Normative slow policy change means it is just as slow to implement adverse policies as well, giving time for citizens to put in the effort and time to roll it back just as slowly. Hence Benjamin Franklin's "...if you can keep it" quip.

What we see as alarming, fast-paced changes today are the culmination of generations of dogged efforts at policy changes frequently made opportunistically rather than specifically goal-directed, incubating emergent adverse behavior given rise by generations of insufficient citizen participation assiduously maintaining the republic's edifice.

The US political arena has its version of Usenet's Eternal September, where newcomers arrive (often timed to presidential elections) in a fresh, eager batch putting in tons of time and effort, then ebb like the tide when they don't see the results they anticipated (forgetting Bismarck's dictum that "Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.") within 1-4 years. Only a smattering remain to welcome the next batch. When life changes (job-related moves, children, extended family medical issues, etc.) enter the picture, it filters out even more (interesting relationships to explore here between most citizens unable to find stability navigating those life changes, and political participation). It's a stamina-oriented sport with results often measured in decades, and the work that produces real results is often very tedious and distinctly lacking glamor.

Funny, Obama certainly didn't lack the power to wage mass genocide on brown skinned people.

Well go ahead. All of you mod me down. But you cannot explain the executive Branch's response to Snowden. Did the Republicans in legislature do that? No. That was purely the administration's choice.

> Well go ahead. All of you mod me down

The HN guidelines ask you not to comment like this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Moderation is supposed to be selective. And a downvote is not harassment.

The national security state has a lot of inertia. There's a long discussion to be had about what Obama's choices realistically were (and never forget I'd say there's at least a 50% chance the cia assisted in assassinating a sitting US president), but you seem more interested in the green lantern theory of the presidency.

fyi I didn't mod you down

> We thought Obama would be the guy to save the country this. But reality is a lot more complicated than ideals.

People generally don't like being reminded that they have been duped into believing the hype, even when believing it was actually the best thing.

It's also a human psychological trick that we cannot easily imagine what would have happened if we did not believe or did not have "hope".

So there is fact that things didn't get rectified as much as promised, the fact that many people believed that would happen, and the probable actuality that things got much better than if they didn't believe.

To his credit, Sanders has explicitly said that a president can't change the country singlehandedly and a grassroots political movement is needed to achieve any meaningful change. Any supporter who thinks electing him is the end of it isn't listening to his message.

It was pretty apparent in '08 that Obama wasn't going to _save_ anything. Obama, is, was and will always be a Statist. Everyone was exuberant for the removal of Bush and nothing more, the fact that he is considered black was just a bonus. In '12, it was literally the lesser of two evils.

This was mostly on GWB's watch.

What was mostly on GWB's watch?

The parent doesn't imply that Obama was president when events in the article took place.

Also; Trump 2016. Make America Great Again.

I can't tell if that's a sarcastic Trump endorsement since he's one of the few candidates pledging to expand the surveillance state..

    Trump said his position in favor of the NSA data
    collection had been the same since before last
    month's terrorist attacks in Paris, which stoked fears
    of international terrorism and revived debate over
    government surveillance measures. 
 
    "I assume when I pick up my telephone people are
    listening to my conversations anyway, if you want to
    know the truth," Trump told Hewitt. "It's a pretty sad
    commentary."
 
    [..]

    Trump said Tuesday that he would be "fine" with
    restoring provisions of the Patriot Act to allow for the
    bulk data collection, something candidates such as
    former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush have also called for that
    was banned with the passage of the USA Freedom Act, 
    which Cruz supported.
 
    "As far as I'm concerned, that would be fine,"
    Trump said. 

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/26167...