Exactly right. It's in practice impossible for politicians to draft legislation themselves and still have the time and political capital to pass it. In modern p

Exactly right. It's in practice impossible for politicians to draft legislation themselves and still have the time and political capital to pass it. In modern politics it's a mistake to see 'Senator Smith' as an independent entity; he is more like the CEO of 'Senator Smith Inc.': leading, glad-handling, and making high-level decisions - but the grunt-work of drafting laws falls to lower-level members of the organization, lobbyists, or so-called 'think tanks'. There is a great book on this subject by Paul Light, "The President's Agenda", that goes into how even the president is usually forced to choose between pre-existing options rather than draft his own initiatives.