You will be able to describe the tension between the president's role as chief executive and the constitutional checks on presidential power after you've read this chapter.
Strategies and tools are used by presidents to overcome constitutional limitations.
The importance of leadership style and image is related to presidential power.
There are ways in which public opinion affects the relationship between citizens and the president.
What's at stake.
The elephant in the classroom is a political figure who has taken Washington by storm.
Every discussion is a potential pitfall with students split between supporters and detractors.
It would be easy to talk about something other than Trump.
Imagine if your political science instructors became cable news hosts.
It would be hair-on-fire education in an era of hair-on-fire politics.
It would leave very little time for more conventional details like how a bill becomes a law.
Dodging the scandals, the media distraction, the next big news, and generally ignoring the elephant would risk making American politics normal again.
We can take another route, douse our hair with a fire hose and look closely at the political, media, and entertainment phenomenon that is Donald Trump.
The fact that he is a huge and divisive figure in American politics suggests that he has tapped into the American mindset in ways that say a lot about who we are and where we might be going as a country.
We need to unpack this presidency and figure out what it means for us going forward.
President Trump has used social media to speak to his supporters, respond to news stories, and fight his political opponents.
Efforts to limit the practice have largely been abandoned.
Donald Trump cleared a field of more than a dozen establishment Republican candidates to get the nomination.
The other candidates struggled to get out from under the nickname he had saddled them with, as the entertainer left no air for them.
He won the Electoral College vote but failed to get a majority of the popular vote.
30 percent of Americans stand by him no matter what.
He once said that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone without losing support.
That might be one of the few things he hasn't tried.
He was a reality TV host, but also a businessman who learned his craft in New York real estate.
He hides his financial dealings from the public.
He doesn't reveal his tax returns, hires his own children, and makes money off government use of his properties.
Many positions have been left unfilled because his administration did not vet his appointments carefully.
The White House has a lot of turnover.
He likes to pit employees against each other in order to get his approval.
When he upsets a political apple cart, by pulling out of a treaty, pardoning a renegade sheriff, threatening to veto a bill his party passed, or just throwing his staff off, many Americans are certain that it is sexist or racist.
People say he can be charming in person and that he really wants to be liked.
To supporters, he is a breath of fresh air, a kick in the pants to the elites who seem far away from their interests.
They applaud what they hear as an authentic voice willing to bust through the constraints of political correctness, and for whom no sentiment is too outrageous to say out loud.
It echoes the victimhood they feel from the elites that look down on them, the government that ignores them, and a future that doesn't seem to have a place for them.
When Trump starts talking about the threat to democracy, they cheer him on.
He is a scam artist who got lucky in the presidential election because he never thought he would win.
Without a background in politics or commitment to democratic values, he endangers the system he finds himself leading by breaking rules that are needed for the longterm health of democracy.
Many think his detractors are Democrats or Republicans because they share a devotion to constitutional norms.
They want to see the status quo changed by democratic means, not by blowing it up.
It is not possible to say which of these groups is right or wrong because they live in different media worlds, make decisions based on different perception of reality, and think the other is crazy.
Americans haven't seen a leader like Trump before.
The American narrative says that the president of the United States is the most powerful person on the planet.
The leader of the nation that has one of the most powerful economies, one of the greatest military forces, and the longest running government the world has ever seen is the elected leader.
Full-time reporters are assigned to the White House for media coverage.
The White House helps feed and control the narrative with a web site, Facebook page, and other social media connections, and keeps us posted on what presidents do every day, even if they only went to church or played a round of golf.
The presidency's monopolization of the public space is what one scholar calls it.
In a perfect storm of telegenic personality and social media potential, that has never been more true than it has in the Trump years.
When there is a school shooting, a foreign terrorist attack, a natural disaster, or a big drop in the stock market, we and the media look to the president to solve our problems and represent the nation in our times of struggle.
The irony is that the U.S. Constitution provides for a weak chief executive, and one whose job is so often at odds that most countries separate them into two distinct jobs.
It's difficult to do well as president because of the need to get along with the other two branches and the extensive executive branch they oversee.