During the recent presidential campaign a rumor was started and widely circulated that Barack Obama, if elected, would begin a process to pay reparations to Black descendents of former slaves.
Such rhetoric betrays a serious lack of understanding of how things work at the highest levels of politics. For one, the office of President of the United States is primarily a figure head position. Another thing is that presidents have very little real power. The executive branch of government at the federal level was purposely designed by the writers of the Constitution to be the weakest of the three governing bodies.
The reparations rumor was designed to have the same effect on the body politic as the …