It's not top-down. I think this is a trap that people fall into. We are operating a massive distributed message passing system (the financial-political system) with no top-down authority any more. No one is in charge. We are _all_ King Louis XIV, sitting around waiting for the minions to deliver trinkets. Meanwhile the guillotine is on its way.
You might have forgotten in the last four years of "I don't take responsibility for anything" but the President is supposed to be that authority. Armed with the bully pulpit of being on every TV channel if he needs to be, armed with millions of people at his direct beck and call, with the tools of executive orders and being able to declare national emergencies.
Every other head of goverment has used some of these tools, even failures like Boris Johnson. That the US didn't is an indictment of the president and indirectly the US voter base.