Cass Sunstein

And when she went in to see Putin, she said, I'm so sorry, I have to leave right now.

We can't do the meeting because I have to make my flight.

And he said, you'll make your flight.

And she said, how am I going to make my flight?

And he said, I'll make sure you make your flight.

She said, how can I do that?

You know, there's traffic.

It's far away, and I can't get there.

And he said, I'll close all the streets.

I'm going to close all the streets.

You can just go.

You won't have any traffic.

You'll be there ahead of time.

Okay, so our presidents can't do that.

That's not exactly an emergency of the first order.

But if you slow things down, it might be the president can't do anything about school loans, can't do enough about a sudden economic downturn, can't do enough about immigration.

Can't do enough about violence in the streets.

There are any number of things that the separation of powers potentially forbids a necessary response to.

Now, the bet is that Congress will either have previously or will now authorize relevant presidential action.

So the right way to think of it is the separation of powers is a bet.