12.1: Introduction

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President Donald Trump signs a tariff on aircraft parts at his desk in the Oval Office in March 2025.

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 one of the most arduous and grueling 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, but only 45 have ever actually held it. Of those 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.

In spite of this danger, the American presidency is highly sought after. It was designed by men who were wary of any political system which so empowered any one person. Yet today the chief executive they established can’t leave the White House without “the nuclear football,” a briefcase containing codes which could launch nuclear weapons at any world capital. This would have seemed surreal in the early days of the republic. Nowadays, Americans expect nothing less.

The presidency’s evolution from a mostly subservient functionary of Congress to the major player in American foreign and domestic policy parallels the United States’ evolution from a fledgling gaggle of ex-colonies to the most powerful country on the planet. America asks far more of its presidents now than it did in the past. It also offers them far greater 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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