How's that going, Mr President?

Arguably, the consensus is that the President of the United States is the most powerful person in the USA, if not the world. So the story goes. 

 But wait! How is that going, Mr. President??

Do that facts of What Is prove the consensus - assertion? Or not?

Let's see: POTUS cannot control Syria. POTUS cannot control Congress. POTUS could not stop the shutdown of the US government.

Was Mr. Truman able to avoid Pearl Harbor?

So where IS this great (some say absolute) power?

Let's ask Mr. Obama. The frustration of seeing that his "personal power" is totally mythological is writ large on his face. To encounter obvious powerless to affect what is deeply important in the programming of the organism called POTUS is devastating; this know from my experience, though my experience certainly does not compare! Not a 100th of a percent on any scale! Hopefully this old thing has lost that hubris, that arrogance.

In any event, the politics of this nation is a marvelous (albeit somewhat scary) metaphor for the Human Dilemma. Worth a bit of inquiry? WHO claims to have personal power? How's that exercise of "your" power going?

Perhaps an insight will occur. We shall see...