Why the Presidency is Weak

One big thing Barack Obama has learned about being president? The job isn't as powerful as you might expect.

In a new interview with Bill Simmons at GQ, which is well worth reading in full, Obama explains that he "didn't fully appreciate" how "decentralized power is" in the US political system until he took office.

That is, to get anything done, he had to spend a ton of his time trying to persuade other people. Here's what he told Simmons:

OBAMA: What I didn’t fully appreciate, and nobody can appreciate until they’re in the position, is how decentralized power is in this system. When you’re in the seat and you’re seeing the housing market collapse and you are seeing unemployment skyrocketing and you have a sense of what the right thing to do is, then you realize, "Okay, not only do I have to persuade my own party, not only do I have to prevent the other party from blocking what the right thing to do is, but now I can anticipate this lawsuit, this lobbying taking place, and this federal agency that technically is independent, so I can’t tell them what to do. I’ve got the Federal Reserve, and I’m hoping that they do the right thing—and by the way, since the economy now is global, I’ve got to make sure that the Europeans, the Asians, the Chinese, everybody is on board." A lot of the work is not just identifying the right policy but now constantly building these ever shifting coalitions to be able to actually implement and execute and get it done.

House Votes To Increase Security Checks On Refugees From Iraq, Syria

The House of Representatives has easily passed a GOP-authored bill to restrict the admission of Iraqi and Syrian refugees to America by requiring extra security procedures.

The bill — called the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act of 2015, or the American SAFE Act of 2015 — would require the secretary of Homeland Security, the head of the FBI and the director of national intelligence to sign off on every individual refugee from Iraq and Syria, affirming he or she is not a threat.

The FBI director would also need to confirm that a background investigation, separate from the Homeland Security screening, had been conducted on each refugee.

Lawmakers say it is the first of many bills aimed at addressing security concerns in the wake of the Paris attacks, reports NPR's Muthoni Muturi.Supporters of the bill say it would require a "pause" in admitting Syrian and Iraqi refugees, as current applications would be halted while a new vetting process was established. Some conservative critics object that it doesn't ban such refugees outright.

Meanwhile, liberal House members say requiring top officials to be involved in thousands of individual applications is unmanageable, and that the bill would result in an extended roadblock for Syrians and Iraqis fleeing a humanitarian crisis. That's a rejection of American values, some Democrats argue.
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What The 2016 Candidates Would Do About ISIS, In One Chart

Hillary Clinton has revealed how she would fight ISIS in the wake of the attacks on Paris. Among her ideas: a no-fly zone, support for local troops, and a new authorization for the U.S. to use force in the region.

In a Thursday speech, the former secretary of state laid out her plan, as well as some attacks on her Republican opponents.

"Turning away orphans, applying a religious test, discriminating against Muslims, slamming the door on every single Syrian refugee — that is just not who we are. We are better than that," she said in response to some GOP candidates' plans to either stop Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. or to only allow Christians to enter.

She's not the only one with a plan for fighting ISIS; there has been a flurry of candidate promises in the wake of the attacks in Paris a week ago. In Politico on Thursday, Marco Rubio laid out the steps he'd take, which include reversing defense sequestration. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, told Georgetown students that he wants Middle Eastern nations to step up more in the fight.

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Fact-checking the 2016 Democratic presidential candidates

PolitiFact has fact-checked each of the top 5 Democratic candidates running for president. Now you can see how they all stack up on PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter. 

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Candidates are ordered based on the RealClearPolitics.com average of presidential polls as of Oct. 23, 2015
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Fact-checking the 2016 GOP presidential candidates

PolitiFact has fact-checked each of the top 13 Republican candidates running for president. Now you can see how they all stack up on PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter. 

Candidates are ordered based on the RealClearPolitics.com average of presidential polls as of Nov. 4, 2015.
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Where The 2016 Candidates Stand On Immigration, In One Chart

Immigration is shaping up to be one of the most contentious and emotional topics in the 2016 presidential race. It's also one on which candidates' views aren't yet fully formed.

It turns out that nailing down candidates' stances on immigration is really hard. They change their minds (or, at least, their messaging) fairly often, and they place a lot of conditions on what they want: mandatory E-Verify, but only if the system is revamped to work better. A path to legal status, but only once the border is secure (which raises another question: Does "secure border" mean the same thing to everyone?).

But it's worth it to figure this out. After research and reaching out to campaigns, here's our rundown of where candidates fall on six different immigration policy questions. (We plan to do this for other topics throughout the campaign season, as well. Check out our climate change table here.)

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Gotcha! Can't Politicians Handle Tough Questions?

Democrat, Republican, independent — it doesn't matter. They all love griping about the "gotcha" question.

Politicians of all stars and stripes say "gotcha" has got to go. And with the fervor of attacks against "gotcha" questions, you might think the term, or the accusation, was new. Not so fast.

Merriam-Webster defines "gotcha" as "an unexpected problem or usually unpleasant surprise." It's often paired with an exclamation mark for emphasis on its ambush-like nature.

The meaning of "gotcha" in a political context is hotly debated — and it usually depends whom you're asking.

"Gotcha" journalism is "what politicians frequently accuse reporters of when doing their jobs of trying to uncover information," Chuck McCutcheon and David Mark wrote in Dog Whistles, Walk-Backs and Washington Handshakes. The two journalists wrote the book in an effort to decode the political jargon tossed around in our nation's capital.

Politicians would probably fire back with a different definition, one that mentions catching them off guard with the goal of making them look bad.

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Ben Carson said raising the minimum wage will increase joblessness

At the Fox Business Network debate, it didn’t take long for the topic of the minimum wage to come up.

During a back-and-forth with the moderators, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson urged caution on raising the minimum wage, saying, "People need to be educated on the minimum wage. Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases."

We checked a similar claim by Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md. In November 2014, Cardin made the opposite case, claiming that "every time we've increased the minimum wage, we've seen a growth in jobs."

We rated Cardin’s claim Mostly False, after determining that during the 12 months following each of the 11 minimum wage increases since 1978, about half produced a net gain in jobs and about half produced a net loss of jobs.

In this case, we decided we couldn’t rely on the exact same data, since Cardin referred to a growth in jobs, while Carson referred to an increase in joblessness. Those aren’t exactly the same things, though the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates both metrics.

So we used the same methodology to look at the 12-month changes in unemployment level after those 11 minimum-wage hikes.

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Takeaways from the Republican debate

(CNN)As the first primaries creep ever closer, candidates are feeling the pressure to rise above the pack and prove their electoral viability.

Each candidate came in with different marks to hit. Jeb Bush needed a game-changing performance. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz wanted to maintain their momentum. And Rand Paul wanted to get into the act.

Here's how they fared:

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