It makes you wonder how anything ever gets done

Having read about the first 100 or so pages of the new book, “Obama’s Wars,” by Bob Woodward, I am struck by one thing: How little actual raw information reaches the president of the United States.
This is to say, the president, this one or any other, makes decisions not on what he knows, but on what other people know, filter for him and present to him.
The staff -- or more probably the staff’s staff, or maybe even the staff’s staff’s staff -- gathers information, turns it into some kind of report and then report works its way back up to the president, from which he makes a decision.
There are two things to recognize about this:
1. With the complexity of the world today, it would be impossible for the president to understand every detail of every facet of his administration; and
2. Part of the reason we pick a president is the quality of the people we think he will put into those key positions.
However, it is disturbing how badly someone who seems to be irrelevant could derail an entire administration by providing bad, skewed or incomplete information to the chain of command. Or, for that matter, push an agenda simply by manipulating the information that reaches the people who reach the people who reach the president.
From John P. Burke’s "The Institutional Presidency," in The Presidency and the Political System:

The Executive Branch and the Office of the President have grown significantly since George Washington first took office in 1789. He purposely downplayed the status of the office, not wanting the people to revere him as anything but a patriotic man willing to serve his country. He dealt personally with the Congress and the Courts, not relying on intermediaries to carry his messages for him. Jefferson employed a staff of two--a messenger and a secretary. By 1900, the White House staff had grown to a dozen. The explosion of activity in the White House during Franklin Roosevelt's administration highlighted the need for additional staff and the number of people working for the President has steadily increased since that time. The Executive Office of the President now employs more than five hundred people.

And that article was in a book (How quaint -- books.) published in 1998. What’s happened since then?

This 500 is just the president’s staff, not the cabinet members and their departments, such as defense, state, etc.
And yet, we expect the president to have an eloquent, informed answer on anything that is happening in any part of the world, including places that many of us have never even heard of.
Just this past week, I learned about the island nations of Sao Tome and Principe, off the coat of Western Africa. But, if I was campaigning for president, I’d be expected to know about it, such as:

In 2001, São Tomé and Nigeria reached agreement on joint exploration for petroleum in waters claimed by the two countries of the Niger Delta geologic province. After a lengthy series of negotiations, in April 2003 the joint development zone (JDZ) was opened for bids by international oil firms. The JDZ was divided into 9 blocks; the winning bids for block one, ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobil, and the Norwegian firm, Equity Energy, were announced in April 2004, with São Tomé to take in 40% of the $123 million bid, and Nigeria the other 60%. Bids on other blocks were still under consideration in October 2004. São Tomé has received more than $2 million from the bank to develop its petroleum sector. São Tomé stands to gain significant revenue both from the bidding process and from follow-on production, should reserves in the area match expectations.

Oh, and in addition to knowing things like that, things that I can just cut and paste from Wikipedia, a president has to that kind of stuff about every country in the world. Even a presidential candidate has to know this stuff.
And, he has a staff to summarize and filter the information so he knows what the key points are and how they relate to his party’s platform.
Oh, and by the way, when questioned, he has to make sure he doesn’t accidentally say something in such a way that inadvertently insults anyone.
It seems a little silly, but maybe we as voters should find out before the president is elected who will be members of his staff and cabinet.
But, to make an informed decision at that level of detail, I’ll need a staff of my own.

P.S. Just for fun, next time you are invited to a town hall meeting with a presidential candidate, ask him about the oil deal between Nigeria and Sao Tome and see what he says.