Radio Atlantic

Is the Presidency Broken?

“We are a president-obsessed nation, so much so that we undermine the very idea of our constitutional democracy,” writes John Dickerson in his May cover story in The Atlantic. “No one man—or woman—can possibly represent the varied, competing interests of 327 million citizens.” Have we heaped so much upon the president that the job has become impossible? Is Trump testing the office in valuable ways? And if the presidency is broken, how do we fix it?
Links

- "The Hardest Job in the World" (John Dickerson, May 2018 Issue)
- “Scott Pruitt Bypassed the White House to Give Big Raises to Favorite Aides” (Elaina Plott and Robinson Meyer, April 3, 2018)
- "Letter to Joseph Hooker from Lincoln, January 26, 1863" (Library of Congress)
- Educated (Tara Westover, 2018)
- Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It (Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik, 2018)
- Lincoln in the Bardo (George Saunders, 2017)
- “There’s Something Funny About Tiffany Haddish” (Caity Weaver, GQ, March 26, 2018)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Atlantic has long been known as an ideas-driven magazine. Now we’re bringing that same ethos to audio. Like the magazine, the show will “road test” the big ideas that both drive the news and shape our culture. Through conversations—and sometimes sharp debates—with the most insightful thinkers and writers on topics of the day, Radio Atlantic will complicate overly simplistic views. It will cut through the noise with clarifying, personal narratives. It will, hopefully, help listeners make up their own mind about certain ideas.
The national conversation right now can be chaotic, reckless, and stuck. Radio Atlantic aims to bring some order to our thinking—and encourage listeners to be purposeful about how they unstick their mind.