From a long-time Washington insider...

It should be noted that all modern presidents
face a slew of issues, and none of them have felt
in control of events but have instead felt
controlled by them. JFK in one week faced the
Soviets, civil rights, the Berlin Wall, the
southern Democratic mandarins of the U.S. Senate.
He had to face Cuba, only 90 miles away,
importing Russian missiles. But the difference
now, 45 years later, is that there are a million
little Cubas, a new Cuba every week. It's all so
much more so. And all increasingly crucial. And
it will be for the next president, too.
...
I have a nagging sense, and think I have
accurately observed, that many of these people
[the elites] have made a separate peace. That
they're living their lives and taking their
pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that
they're going forward each day with the
knowledge, which they hold more securely and with
greater reason than nonelites, that the wheels
are off the trolley and the trolley's off the
tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that
there is nothing they can do about it.

I expect that last paragraph applies to very few
Power Freaks and, like fish that live in water,
they have no concept of air.

Full article.