The Impossible Presidency

Think about the job of the modern day corporate CEO. He or she has a board and often difficult shareholders to answer to. Usually his or her company is global, with far flung interests and operations. The company has thousands of needy employees. And all of it exists in a swirl of 24/7, always on communications; in multiple time zones with always changing tastes, values and economic conditions. Sounds difficult right?

Now imagine those same issues on steroids. Multiply by ten or even a hundredfold and you just begin to understand the modern Presidency of the United States.

While the current occupant may find endless time to watch Fox news, tweet, and play golf. The reality is that the modern president...particularly since Roosevelt, has become an office almost beyond the functional or intellectual capacity of any one human being.

The speed, the creative destruction, the siloed and specific constituencies, 24/7 media, are just the beginning. After all, those are the things we are all dealing with. All of those things times 325 million plus the world, is the equation of modern and in fact impossible presidency. It's all described by Jeremi Suri in The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America's Highest Office