I do not dispute that Anderson's hands may indeed be tied, but one of the benefits several members believed Anderson would bring to Amtrak was a renewed focus on dependable service. In exchange for box lunches at full fare prices, a big push for route-weakening bus bridges, and the repeated antagonization of erstwhile supporters, at least we could all be thankful that remaining services would be run in a timely and efficient manner. So far that does not appear to be the case, at least in my experience.
Yeah, I don't think that it is within realistic powers of any Amtrak CEO to achieve that in a year or two, on infrastructure over which he has no dispatching control. Contrary to public propaganda, actually the across the board under investment in rail infrastructure by everyone involved (private and public) is starting to come back to roost. The myth that CTC will allow downgrading of track infrastructure to the level that was unrealistically promised is now getting exposed. Hunter Harrison who had drunk that Koolaid lock, stock and barrel, fortunately made a horizontal exit before he could cause further damage. The quality of management, disconnected from deep knowledge of what they are managing does not bode well for improvements as we move bravely forward into the future either.
It is simply not possible to run as reliable a railroad, passenger or freight as one would like given where collectively we find our rail infrastructure and quality of management as it is, given the demands now placed on it. Yeah, a more sympathetic towards passenger service, freight railroad could squeeze a few passenger trains through a bit better if they so desired, but the relative revenue situation leads to less desirable situation, not withstanding the law etc.
This is not to excuse Anderson's several transgressions against the wishes of the railfan and advocacy community, some of which make sense and some doesn't, at least to me. But I cannot tell for sure how much of it is tweaking the tails of an industry that is substantially stuck somewhere between 1900 and 1950, and how much is actually towards dismantling passenger service, though I suspect quite a bit of it is towards dismantling significant parts of passenger service as we have known it and replacing it with something else. I am not sure that I necessarily like the visions of the "something else", but I can see how passenger service as we have known it, is not necessarily sustainable, unless Congress is willing to stand up and state unequivocally that sustaining it through adequate government support is part of their long term vision.
As far as I can see Anderson's main positive contributions are in the area of safety and maintenance of ramshackle equipment, and more consistent planning for fleet replacement, such as it is. His dogged pursuit of operational self sufficiency, which still is the underlying Mantra that Congress has doggedly refused to change, notwithstanding Jim Matthew's intriguing parsing of Congressional sophistry to try to make an argument that they have actually changed, will lead to a less than desirable system overall (I think). But as Walter Cronkite used to say at the end of each of his newscast - "And that is the way it is on this day" or something to that effect.