Is the Presidency Broken?

Radio Atlantic

The Atlantic

Politics, News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2018

⏱️ 50 minutes

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Summary

“We are a president-obsessed nation, so much so that we undermine the very idea of our constitutional democracy,” writes John Dickerson in his May cover story in The Atlantic. “No one man—or woman—can possibly represent the varied, competing interests of 327 million citizens.” Have we heaped so much upon the president that the job has become impossible? Is Trump testing the office in valuable ways? And if the presidency is broken, how do we fix it? Links - "The Hardest Job in the World" (John Dickerson, May 2018 Issue) - “Scott Pruitt Bypassed the White House to Give Big Raises to Favorite Aides” (Elaina Plott and Robinson Meyer, April 3, 2018) - "Letter to Joseph Hooker from Lincoln, January 26, 1863" (Library of Congress) - Educated (Tara Westover, 2018) - Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It (Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik, 2018) - Lincoln in the Bardo (George Saunders, 2017) - “There’s Something Funny About Tiffany Haddish” (Caity Weaver, GQ, March 26, 2018) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The White House is a swirling mess of chaos and disappointment.
0:04.0	Not just this White House, basically every presidential administration in living memory.
0:09.0	What if the problem isn't the president?
0:12.0	What if it's the presidency? This of the Atlantic. With me here in DC is my esteemed co-host Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic's editor-in-chief. Hello Jeff.
0:38.0	Hello, Matt. We have with us also for the first time around the radio Atlantic table.
0:43.0	One of our staff writers, Elina Plot,
0:45.0	who covers politics for the Atlantic.
0:46.3	Hello, Eliana.
0:47.2	Hi, Matt.
0:48.3	And with us is a guest from another podcast, John Dickerson, a host of many things.
0:57.0	Is that, I thought his show was called Stranger Things.
1:01.0	Isn't he the host of Stranger Things?
1:04.0	I would like to be a host of Stranger Things.
1:05.0	That would be cool.
1:06.0	In our family, we just binged over the spring break on Strange Things.
1:10.0	It's not healthy psychologically to binge on Strange Things.
1:12.0	And don't do it the night before when you're living in strange quarters.
1:15.0	So it was a...
1:17.0	John, welcome to Radio Atlantic.
1:20.0	Thank you very much.
1:21.0	I'm happy to be out of my podcast bubble and in a new
1:23.8	podcast bubble. Well we put you into a magazine bubble this month. Your piece
	...

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