I'm sort of curious, given the work you've done, like, have you been watching the Democratic

presidential debates?

Uh, here and there.

Alex Hurtal Fernandez is a political scientist, teaches at Columbia.

When I asked him this question, he was laughing because the way he thinks about political power,

it goes so far beyond the White House.

It's far beyond the national politicians in these debates.

In a way, I wonder if you kind of see them as beside the point.

I, you know, I wouldn't go that far, but I would say that the way our institutions are

so fragmented, the fact that you have city governments and state governments and bureaucratic

agencies, you know, there are a lot of ways of getting what you want.

Alex's specialty is all the different ways of getting what you want in American politics.

He thinks about the health of our overlapping political ecosystems, the think tanks that

feed research to politicians, the city workers who carry out legislation both big and small,

this web of support, it can strengthen or dilute a president's ideas, and eventually,

a president's policies.

And that is, I think, a far bigger variable in explaining what parties end up winning,

and how they use their power over time.

You know, I think it was so striking when Obama was stepped down as president, one of the

first regrets that he had was not doing more to build up the party system.

We haven't done it as well as we need to.

Obama spoke about this regret in an interview with NPR just before he left office.

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