There are two gravitational forces at work in any legislative body — always in tension with one another, and always locked in a zero-sum tug-of-war — the desire to socialize the credit and to individualize the blame.
In Washington, D.C., this comes most prominently in the form of Congress, the Article I branch, prostrating itself at the feet of the executive, the Article II branch, and the court, the Article III branch. War powers have been outsourced almost entirely to the president. Budgets begin with and run substantially through the executive branch. Massive decisions on policy are placed in the laps of nine justices who then must ascertain the meaning of rules written decades or centuries ago — or choose to throw the past meaning out the window entirely.
