Myth- The President is the most powerful person in the world?
The President is often considered the most powerful man in the world because he is the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, however there are many other political leaders who have a lot more power in terms of their ability to say something and have that get implemented as policy. Dictators, for instance, they don't have to deal with things like the Senate, Supreme Court or voters, so they obviously have a lot more power over their own policies. They have a lot more power to say, "Us as a country are going to do this." or "Us as a country are doing to do that." Whereas the President has a lot of problems when it comes to that. It's more difficult for the President to make promises, international promises, like for instance signing the Kyoto protocol, when you can promise yes I'm going to sign the Kyoto protocol then you have to send it to the Senate and they say nope, not going to ratify it. Well crap, what do you do then? So, the President is the most powerful single individual but the President as an office is not the most powerful office in the United States. There's divided power. The Supreme Court is gaining a lot more power these days than the President originally had and in the Constitution, the Constitution thought that Congress was going to be the most powerful branch.
