Is the presidency too weak an office for Bernie Sanders’s mission?

In my last post I asked: “Does real progress come from a president who knows how to work the system, or does it come from a president who thinks they can change the system?” Now, I want to change my question. I want to ask if real progress will come from the president at all.

Let’s think about how change happens in America. The American government was designed for slow, incremental change by a people scarred by the strength and power of an oppressive government. The president has a fair amount of power, but as we all learned in elementary school, it’s checked and balanced. And today, it’s checked by a legislature comprised by two teams of people who hardly even speak to each other. It’s balanced by an overburdened court system that often takes years to take on major cases.

Much of what Sanders wants to do reflects a new New Deal. This term isn’t quite as in vogue as it was in the last few elections, but he wants a better and stronger safety net. When Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, his visions were largely supported by a congress that recognized the need for dramatic changes to pull the country out of the depression. Are you wondering if we have a congress today that recognizes this need? If so, you need only harken back to Mitch McConnell’s promise on Obama’s first inauguration day: “Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term.” Our top political priority. That attitude hasn’t changed over the last eight years. Our congress is still more focused on preventing the other party’s successes than it is on anything else. And Sanders won’t change that.

Today, I don’t think we’re a country that will see revolutionary change from the oval office, no matter who sits in it. We’ll see pushes in one direction or another from the White House. But the rainbow flags flew when the Supreme Court made a ruling, not when Obama appealed for marriage equality. Today, we’re a country where real change happens in the courtroom rather than the legislature, and we’ve always been a country where change happens in the streets even before the courts start to listen. What caused desegregation? The same court that will eventually enact the reforms Sanders so passionately argues for.

I’d love to see Sanders in a position where he can lead a revolutionary movement, rather than an army and a congress of red and blue pawns. He can leave those exercises for the career politicians.