Lawrence Lessig on East-Coast vs West-Coast code

Focusing on the Presidency is fine but there needs to also be a recognition that the President doesn't often _set_ policy, the bureaucratic core of advisers and department management set the policy based on institutional inertia and the elected and appointed leadership can only make exceptions or get out of the way so that they don't look stupid by contradicting the "experts". This dual-government is maybe less obvious with domestic institutions like FCC or FDA because they just don't have a lot of power, but is very obvious with the security institutions like Homeland Security or DoD, the bureaucracy decides what they want to do and then herd the elected leadership into the rubber stamping their collective will.