12: The Presidency

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The qualifications are few — be a natural-born U.S. citizen at least 35 years old and a U.S. resident for 14 years — but the interview is more arduous and grueling than almost any hiring process ever devised. The $400,000 salary is attractive, but it requires being on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Thousands have applied for this position since it was established, but only 45 men have ever actually held it. Of these 45, eight (18%) have died while doing so, including four (9%) who were shot, making President of the United States arguably the world’s deadliest desk job.

Photograph of President Biden signing a bill in the Oval Office — President Joe Biden signs the Protecting Medicare and American Farmers from Sequester Cuts Act at his desk in the Oval Office in December 2021.

In spite of this danger, the American presidency and the power that comes with it are highly sought after. Yet this mighty office was designed by men who were keenly suspicious of any political system which gave so much power to one person. That the chief executive they established would one day be unable to leave the White House without being accompanied by “the nuclear football” — a briefcase containing codes which can be used to launch nuclear weapons at any world capital — would have seemed surreal in the early days of the republic. Nowadays, we expect nothing less.

How the presidency evolved from a mostly subservient functionary of Congress to the major player in American foreign and domestic policymaking parallels how the United States evolved from a fledgling gaggle of far-flung ex-colonies to the most powerful country on the face of the earth. Today America asks far more of its presidents than it did in the past and offers them a greater deal of legal authority to meet those loftier expectations. How the American political machine works today is closely tied to the role presidents have assumed, rightly or wrongly, in controlling that machine.

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