I Don't Get It

I will now lift a tiny corner of the thick veil of secrecy I keep tightly closed over my professional life.

I am not a high school social studies teacher or a political science professor or a constitutional lawyer or a congresswoman. Everything I know about checks and balances I learned in 11th grade U.S. history (thank you, Mr. J.). Given that I was known to occasionally skip a class in 11th grade, it is quite possible that I missed the day when Mr. J. explained how Congress can pass a bill and the president can sign it and then say he is not going to obey it.

Or maybe they didn't get to that till college, when I must confess that I took not a single politics course and my U.S. History classes were colonial history and labor history, which didn't address the president's ability to ignore Congress. Or maybe they save that for law school, when they teach future presidents that they do not need to obey laws, and maybe that day I had strep throat. Or wasn't in law school.

Or maybe I'm just too stupid or not sophisticated enough to understand, regardless of when they taught it. Because, you know, I'm just an American citizen, and I thought there was this system in which the judicial and the legislative and the executive all kept an eye on each other and made sure no one branch had too much power and they all kinda sorta had to do what the other ones said. But maybe not.