But in their contempt for politicians and journalists, Americans should not be too quick to let themselves off the hook. Any serious effort to reduce the presidency to its pre-imperial proportions would imply rethinking the premises of US foreign policy, based on self-aggrandizing assumptions about American wisdom, competence and prerogatives and about the capacity of others to manage their own affairs. Given our chronic inability--or is it unwillingness?--to see the world as it is and to see ourselves as we really are, such a reassessment seems exceedingly unlikely. In an age of the citizen as consumer-spectator, Americans care enough to complain, but not nearly enough to act. Long live the emperor.
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