This morning, I was talking to a veteran and wise observer of politics. We were talking about the U.S. government — how it’s supposed to be inefficient. I mean, inefficiencies are built into the system, constitutionally. You’re not supposed to be able to do major things, absent a clear consensus.

For decades, politicians have cried “Gridlock!” “The gridlock in Washington, D.C.!” You know who’s responsible for the gridlock? James Madison and the rest of the boys at the Constitutional Convention.

This led my friend and me to the presidency, and the use that Barack Obama has made of it. My friend said, “It took Obama to show me that the power of the presidency is barely fettered.”

The Constitution places great restraints on those who govern us. But it occurs to me — forgive me if this is a Simple Simon thought — that self-restraint is necessary as well. Constitutional restraints, sure, and long may they wave. Long may they be enforced. But self-restraint, too.

Obama has shown a marked absence of self-restraint when it comes to pursuing his political and social goals.

He says over and over that the Constitution forbids him to grant amnesty on his own — he’s not an emperor, you know! Then he goes ahead and does it. He changes the health-care law all on his own. He goes around Congress to a friendlier body, namely the U.N. (Obama is a U.N. man if ever there was one.)

Etc., etc.

Probably, the dictatorial instinct lurks in all men, but it lurks especially strong in Obama. I have never been a fan of the 22nd Amendment, which limits a president to two terms. I was with Reagan on this. He always said that, after his presidency, he would get back out onto the “mashed-potato circuit” and campaign for that amendment’s repeal. The 22nd Amendment was the petulant response of Republicans to FDR’s electoral success.

But you know? I’m glad we have No. 22. It kept us from a third term of Bill Clinton, and it will send O home, or wherever it is he chooses to go.

Political leadership is not for shrinking violets, but some humility in office is beneficial, including in the Oval Office, and a president should not do things merely because he can. Andy Warhol said, “Art is what you can get away with.” Barack Obama’s philosophy seems to be, “The presidency is what you can get away with.”

Of course, when there’s a Republican in the Oval Office, Democrats will rediscover the magic and majesty of the restraining Constitution. (The rest of us should remember it all along.)