By George Friedman
One of the core principles of geopolitical forecasting is the idea that political leaders have far less personal power than they are assumed to have. They live in a universe of constraints that not only limit what they can do but also shape their agendas and actions.
When leaders take office, they are faced with complex and competing interests. As a result, the distance between what they say they want to do, what they actually intend to do and what they ultimately do can be dramatic. This is doubly true in the United States, where the founders created a system of government designed to constrain the powers of the president through several institutions: a Congress divided into two houses, running by different rules and populated by representatives who answer to their own constituencies; a Supreme Court answerable to no one and itself divided into factions; and sovereign states that are frequently free to disregard the federal government. Combine that with a dangerous world and an economy out of everyone’s control, and the president can do relatively little. This is the way the world is, and the founders compounded its complexity.
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