At a town hall style campaign speech in Wisconsin on June 11 , President Obama wrote a letter for 10 year old girl, Kennedy Corpus, who had apparently cut class to see the President.

“To Kennedy’s teacher: Please excuse Kennedy’s absence. She’s with me. Barack Obama.”

While it is likely that this was meant merely as a cute display for the future voter and is bound to send a shiver up the legs of fawning Obama fanatics everywhere, it does point to a larger issue that is largely forgotten.

You are not in charge of the country Mr. Obama. No President is. This is certainly not a sign of disrespect on my part. I do however point out something that was originally pointed out over 200 years ago by our founding fathers. The President of the United States is the leader of the Executive branch of the Federal Government – and that is it. There are three branches – he is in charge of one of them. He is Commander in Chief of the United States Military which falls under his branch of government.

The Federal Government was not designed to be the chief overseer of everything. Mr. Obama, addressing his inexperience during his campaign, was described by his supporters to be “ready to rule from day one.” But having a ruler was not the reason why they came up with the position of President. In fact, much effort was put into the design to prevent that from happening. There is this common perception that the Federal Government is “higher” or more important – that it somehow supersedes lesser powers in some sort of “authority flowchart” of who can tell you what to do. There is a perception that life is good in this country because the Federal Government, through their generosity, allows you to do things or – through their good graces – decides to give you things. We know that people have started to believe this because whatever problem that arises, people wonder what the President is going to do about it. And everybody quakes when threatened by the prospect of having the Big Government step in and take over things.

The writers of the Constitution were very explicit that their new Federal government would be required to have very little to do with the lives of the average citizen. Each of the 3 branches of government has very limited powers which you can read about in the famous document. Each power is listed there. None of these powers included anything about running the lives of the citizens or nobly giving you stuff or being in charge of you, your employment, your health care, your retirement, your education – or your being allowed to miss school. Nowhere in the Constitution does it allow any of the 3 branches to take over businesses, take over your health care or make things “fair” – however they may perceive that to be.

Strangely, the few powers actually given to the Federal government are the ones that have caused the biggest uproar when they are actually carried out.  Preventing terrorists from invading our country and attacking our citizens is one example that has offended so many Americans.

So no Mr. President, I respect you and your office – although we may disagree at times. But I am in charge of me. I am responsible for making my own living and supporting my own family within the guidelines of the laws of the land. Now I ask please that you go and do only what you are supposed to do and leave me alone to do what I am supposed to do. This was the vision of our founding fathers. The President is not the ruler of the country – he is the leader of one of the 3 branches of our limited self-governed republic.