Recently, President Obama sat down for an interview with Stephen Colbert in which he was asked about his 2008 campaign mantra that presidents tended to grab too much power. “Then you became president, and you seemed to hold a lot of power,” Colbert said. “Does that happen to every president?”

Obama’s response revealed a president resigned to going it alone on his most important priorities: “For the first time, you’re asking a sensible question,” he chided. “The structure of our democracy is checks and balances and every president, even if on the outside they were complaining, there’s always the temptation to want to go ahead and get stuff done.”