Last night was the second Presidential debate. The hope was by focusing on policy it would cut down on the drama and tantrums so the candidates could offer the hard hitting political positions our Presidential campaigns are famous for. It worked, for the most part, but the main problem with this set up is that it doesn't really give people a proper expectation of what President's can actually do.
Let's look at healthcare, as an example. One of the questions last night was how the candidates planned to reign in premium and deductible costs in the wake of the Affordable Care Act. Hilary gave a pretty vague description about how she has some proposed fixes on her website and than just started recited things that are popular with the ACA. Being the curious fellow that I am, I checked out Hillary's site and came across a pretty good example of what I talked about in my Jill Stein and Gary Johnson pieces, namely, President's can have agenda's, but more often than not, they can't do shit to implement it. Almost every bullet point in Clinton's agenda can only happen via legislative action; want to allow Medicare to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs? Great, just as soon as Congress repeals the law blocking Medicare from doing so. Want to fund the FDA generic drug program to get generic brands out faster to increase competition? Good luck getting Congress to either create new revenue streams to fund it, or allocating funds from somewhere else when they write the budget. Even Trump's "Repeal and Replace" plan would require Congress to pass a law getting rid of the ACA and draft new legislation creating the ground rules for selling policies across state lines, even if the only rule is there aren't any rules.
Basically, it's nice to focus on the headliners and all, but if you want President's to actually follow through on any of the flowery shit they promise, you need to focus on Congress. And so far in this cycle, that just isn't being done. As it stands now, fivethirtyeight has the Democrats retaking control of the Senate, but just barely, with a 51-49 majority. Another projection website has Republicans keeping the House, but with a diminished majority. What this all means in practice is that no matter who wins the next election, the country is still going to be plagued by Congressional gridlock and nothing of significance will get passed.
This doesn't bode very well for Hillary Clinton. She's favored to win, but, unless she can find some way through executive action to push through her policy agenda, she won't be in a very strong position for the 2018 midterms to allow the Democrats to regain majorities in both Houses and spend the last two years of her term furiously passing bills in the hope of making a difference before 2020 rolls around. Because if all Hillary has to show for her Presidency is four more years of economic stagnation, higher debt levels, and higher medical costs, she will lose. And Republicans know this, too. It's why they spent all of Obama's Presidency being as obstructionist as they could be. Their real failure was underestimating how much people like Obama in general and how that would buffer against their efforts to cast him as a do-nothing President. Clinton, on the other hand, doesn't have that luxury. Sure, people will trot out the argument that her approval ratings go up when she's actually in office but I wouldn't expect that to save her this time; mainly because those previous jobs were a state Senator and Secretary of State, jobs that basically only political junkies pay attention to or even notice, but as President, all eyes will be on her from Day One and if she doesn't have anything positive she can point to, she'll be ripped to shreds.
None of that is to say that a President Trump will have an easier time. After all, Trump is the main reason the Senate is likely to flip and why Republicans are staring down a diminished majority in the House; I really don't see House Republicans falling on their swords for bills that will die in the Senate just so they can satisfy Trump's ego. Even now, you have Paul Ryan saying he's not going to go out and campaign on Trump's behalf; now, you could say that this will cost him the Speakership if Republican hardliners find someone who is more in line with Trump's political agenda, but even then, the House will still face the same problem of expending a lot of political capital with nothing to show for it. That's the same strategy that Republicans have been using for the last six years, and the only thing they have to show for that is the lowest Congressional approval rating in history; which isn't exactly the strongest ground to make controversial moves like, say, building a giant border wall, and survive the backlash.
All of this is to say that while the Presidential elections may be fun to talk about because of all the cult of personality conflicts going on, the lion's share of government policy isn't actually determined by who sits in the Oval Office. Yes, President's can set the agenda, and yes they can use the bully-pulpit to influence what the country talks about, but at the end of the day, it's Congress that actually has to follow through and make those things happen. So if you want to actually make a significant change in how the government works, pay more attention to what your senators and congressmen are doing instead of hanging on to every word of whatever asshole splatters themselves across your TV every four years.
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