History UsefulNotes / AmericanPoliticalSystem

Elected representatives of the 50 states meet in the District of Columbia, which consists entirely of one city, UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC. Note that distinction: DC is ''in'' the United States, but not ''of'' them.[[note]]This is to prevent it from being too heavily affected by any one state's petty local politics. UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}} was the original capital until the UsefulNotes/{{Pennsylvania}} state legislature effectively [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Mutiny_of_1783 held Congress hostage in 1783]] convinced everyone else this was a bad idea.[[/note]] The result includes the oddity that the citizens of DC -- despite paying taxes -- have no voting representation in the legislative branch (merely a non-voting representative), and until 1961 couldn't vote in presidential elections. This is {{irony}} from the country that revolted under the battle cry, "No taxation without representation!" The city's residents are disgruntled about it enough that the official DC automobile license plate reads "Taxation Without Representation." To people who live in DC (though not so much the people who work there, many of whom live in bedroom communities across state lines, further complicating the issue of local politics), this is so serious that, when the city got its [[RuleOfThree third]] UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueBaseball franchise, the local population didn't want a third team bearing the name Washington Senators, because, although at any given time, 100 senators are tasked with working ''in'' Washington, the District itself has none of its own.\\

Unlike in many other nations, the US president is both head of state and head of government. The president's principal powers are to sign or veto bills approved by Congress and to appoint Cabinet secretaries, ambassadors, Supreme Court judges, and other federal judges (all with Senate approval), to sign treaties (also subject to the Senate's approval) and to issue pardons (which are not subject to anyone's approval). The president is also the commander-in-chief of the military and is the highest-ranking individual in the chain of command, though they are not personally considered part of the military.[[note]]Even if they were a military officer before becoming president their former rank is now meaningless as far as the chain of command is concerned. For example, UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower was a five-star general before becoming president but then reclaimed his rank after his presidency ended. Of course, as far as the Army was concerned, the difference in who Eisenhower could give orders to as president versus as a five-star general amounted to, basically, "Omar Bradley."[[/note]] The president may issue "executive orders", directives to the Cabinet instructing them on the enforcement of laws. Most executive orders are generally kept running by the next president in line, as presidents protect the prerogatives of the office, though this trend has fallen off as presidents have gotten a lot more eager to issue the orders along ideological lines. All those powers and responsibilities get summed up under the amorphous heading of "leadership", with all the free credit and lightning-rod for dissatisfaction that that entails. You don't have to be crazy to run for President. The Office will do that for you -- or, if you're truly cynical, to you.\\

* The second kind has historically been the most common: the presidential candidate would pick (or let the party pick) a running mate from a different region or ideological orientation from the candidate himself. Thus, if the Democratic presidential candidate was a Northern liberal, you'd expect the running mate to be a Southern or Western moderate or conservative -- or any combination of these terms. The classic example is UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson, a pragmatic Protestant Texan specifically chosen to retain the Southern vote that UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy as a liberal Catholic Yankee might not have gotten otherwise.[[note]]Most southerners who could vote for President at that time voted for Democratic candidates, but anti-Catholicism was quite strong there too. Religion had overridden party loyalty in 1928, when Democratic nominee Alfred Smith, the first major-party Catholic presidential nominee in the U.S., had carried only ''six'' formerly-Confederate states (whereas all eleven of them had voted Democratic in eleven of the previous twelve presidential elections).[[/note]]

** Also, this was the reasoning behind the choices of the three women who have been picked as major-party vice-presidential candidates to date: UsefulNotes/GeraldineFerraro, UsefulNotes/SarahPalin, and UsefulNotes/KamalaHarris. Ferraro was added to Democrat UsefulNotes/WalterMondale's ticket in 1984 mainly to build support in the future; it was thought that Mondale's campaign against popular incumbent UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan was hopeless (and it ultimately was), so putting a woman on the ticket would help the Democrats curry favor with female voters in the future. Meanwhile, the 2008 Republican candidate, UsefulNotes/JohnMcCain, was under pressure on both the left and the right. From the right, he had a reputation for being such a moderate Republican, many conservatives declared that they'd vote for UsefulNotes/HillaryRodhamClinton or a third party over him. From the left, [=McCain=] had the misfortune of being a stuffy old white guy running against Barack "Hope and Change" Obama, a dynamic young black guy who himself had just emerged from a tough Democratic primary campaign against a rival who also wasn't an old white guy -- the aforementioned Hillary Clinton, who still had a lot of supporters in the party. It was thought that Palin, being both ultra-conservative and a woman, would solve both problems simultaneously. And in Harris' case, who was selected as Joe Biden's running mate for the 2020 presidential election, gender was only one of the aspects involved; Harris was also only the third person of color (after Obama and Charles Curtis, Herbert Hoover's VP) to run on a major presidential ticket and the first woman of color to do so, was much younger than the 77-year-old Biden, and had disagreed politically with Biden on key questions in the past. While the first two times it backfired,[[note]]Ferraro and her husband's obtuse finances became a major issue in the campaign, and the revelation that she had a maid and a few million dollars tied up in real estate greatly undermined her "working-class immigrant's daughter" image. Palin, meanwhile, proved to be a gaffe machine and a publicity hound stealing the spotlight from [=McCain=], with a severe lack of depth in foreign policy; Creator/TinaFey's famous "I can see UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} from my house!" joke was based on Palin citing her home state of Alaska (where she was governor) being just over the Bering Strait from Russia as a foreign policy qualification. In both cases, they were ultimately seen by many voters as "token" candidates, having not been properly vetted by campaigns more interested in making a splash than in having strong running mates.[[/note]] Harris ''was'' a strong running mate, as she was fairly popular in her own right and was clearly competent. Perhaps not coincidentally, this ticket succeeded where the previous two had failed.
* The third kind was more common in the past: someone who unsuccessfully sought the presidential nomination would [[ConsolationPrize be given the running mate's slot to soothe his ego.]] LBJ, who ran for the Democratic nomination in 1960, is the closest thing to this since the war, as it was well-known that he wanted the top job himself. Along with the ticket-balancing issue and his Washington connections (which were a bit more extensive than Kennedy's), he was the perfect VP candidate. His actual presidency makes this situation either {{hilarious|InHindsight}} or [[HarsherInHindsight more gut-wrenching.]] Bush Sr. may have been this as well, as he competed with UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan in the 1980 Republican primaries. His victory in the Iowa caucus actually forced Reagan to replace his campaign manager and reorganize his staff. Joe Biden might also have been picked for this reason, as despite his serious case of [[OpenMouthInsertFoot foot-in-mouth disease]], he had run two (notably unsuccessful) presidential campaigns (in 1988 and 2008) and was seen as something of an elder statesman in the Democratic Party.

UsefulNotes/JohnAdams, the very first vice president, described his office as "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." John Nance Garner, UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt's first vice president, was more direct, describing the vice presidency as "not worth a bucket of warm piss".[[note]]So direct, in fact, that for years this phrase was {{bowdlerise}}d as "not worth a bucket of warm ''spit''".[[/note]] (Ironically, FDR went on to become one of the few presidents to have died in office, although Roosevelt had ditched Garner long before.)\\

Historically, the president is a white Protestant, though not always. UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy was Catholic, which was a big deal, and UsefulNotes/BarackObama's father was a black African man, which was an even ''bigger'' deal. Historically, the president has also always been male, though fiction has delighted in depicting female presidents and the possibility is considered nigh inevitable by now. In fact, UsefulNotes/HillaryRodhamClinton came ''very'' close to being chosen as the Democratic candidate for president in 2008, was considered a virtual lock for the position until Obama's rise to prominence, and made history (again) by clinching the nomination after a much more successful primary fight in 2016. Both these generalizations apply equally well to the vice president (three times a woman has been a major party's nomination for veep, the Democrats first picking Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Kamala Harris in 2020, and the Republicans picking Sarah Palin in 2008; UsefulNotes/HerbertHoover's VP, Charles Curtis, was three-eighths Native American; Joe Biden was the first Catholic VP before going on to be president himself with Harris as veep).\\

* 35 years of age or more.
* 14 years residency.

The 25th Amendment also allows a president to relinquish the office ''temporarily'' due to incapacitation. So far this has only been used when the president has to undergo some medical procedure that requires anesthesia, so that if something truly terrible happens while the president is knocked out, there will be an acting president who can take action immediately without provoking a constitutional conflict. It's never happened and may never, but why take the risk? The 25th Amendment further allows the VP and a majority of the Cabinet to declare a president unfit for duty and remove him, even against his will, causing the VP to become acting president immediately. This is a safety valve of obvious last resort and has never yet been invoked in practice, though some very noisy voices suggested that controversial President UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump should have been ousted using it. ''Film/AirForceOne'' and ''Series/TwentyFour'' have both used it for its dramatic possibilities, though.\\

There have been numerous attempts throughout the years to change the system, but none has succeeded. The closest anyone ever got was early in the Nixon administration in 1969, when he and Congress attempted to implement a system that would eliminate the EC and use a run-off between the top two vote-getters if no one got over 50% in the first round. It sailed through the House on a huge margin but couldn’t get over the hump in the Senate or state legislatures because of Dixiecrat opposition. It came up a dozen votes short of earning the necessary supermajority in the Senate, was filibustered, and then died when the congressional term ended.\\

Because the number of electors is roughly equivalent to population density, theoretically all it takes to be elected President is to win the 11 states that have the most delegates: UsefulNotes/{{California}}, UsefulNotes/{{Texas}}, UsefulNotes/{{New York|State}}, UsefulNotes/{{Florida}}, Illinois, UsefulNotes/{{Pennsylvania}}, UsefulNotes/{{Ohio}}, UsefulNotes/{{Michigan}}, UsefulNotes/{{Georgia|USA}}, UsefulNotes/NorthCarolina, and UsefulNotes/NewJersey. A presidential candidate carrying said 11 states will win the election even if their opponent wins every delegate from all the other 39 states ''and'' the District of Columbia. In practice, though, this rarely happens (outside of occasional years like 1936, 1972, or 1984) because many states across the spectrum of population count are considered 'safe' for one of the two biggest parties -- for example, since the 1990s, the Democratic presidential candidates have won California by comfortable margins, while the Republicans have done the same with Texas (although it’s getting less Republican with every passing year).\\

The average American (excluding the editors of the [[http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=GOVMAN U.S. Government Manual]] & [[http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=CDIR the Congressional Directory]], and maybe Creator/TomClancy) [[SmallReferencePools has heard of maybe two or three of these guys]], maybe four if they keep up enough with current events or teach political science, usually taken from the 'Big Four' quartet: the Secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, and the Attorney General, positions that date back to the literal [[UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington Washington]] administration. The Cabinet typically also includes the Vice President, the President’s Chief of Staff, and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Unlike in many other countries, the cabinet meetings are not the avenue where major policy decisions are made in foreign and military affairs: that takes place in the National Security Council where only the relevant officials participate, such as the President, Vice President, and Secretaries of State and Defense (the Secretary of Education, for instance, doesn’t need to know of diplomatic talks with a crazy playboy dictator, weapons sales to UsefulNotes/{{Israel|isWithInfraredMissiles}}, or the invasion plans of the next Middle Eastern oil state waiting in line).\\

The legislative branch of government consists of two houses -- the House of Representatives (often simply "the House") and the Senate. The House members were elected directly by the populace of each state, while the senators of each state were appointed by the state assemblies. The basic idea was one of tension between the two houses, the better to represent the rights of individual people ''and'' those of the states alike. However, since the ratification of the 17th Amendment, representatives and senators alike are now directly elected by popular vote within each state, turning the Senate into just another 100 congressmen/women.[[note]]They could be called at-large congresspeople -- not to be confused with the people who've sat as the only House member for a state so small it merits only one congressional district, or with the historical at-large House members that many states once had, a practice that tailed off in the early-mid 20th century.[[/note]]\\

One major difference between the state and federal governments is that states hold a lot more elections. A state need not limit its elections to the legislature and the chief executive, as the federal government does; they can also hold elections for secretary of state, attorney general, comptroller, state supreme court judges, judges of lower courts, district attorneys, sheriffs, and/or dog catchers. Much of this will be specified in the state constitution, which is generally amended by popular vote as well. Many states also have a procedure where an elected official may be removed (recalled) from office in a special election if enough petitions are gathered. A significant example of this occurred in 2003, when California governor Gray Davis was successfully recalled and replaced by Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger in a special election that included 135 candidates[[note]]Among whom were several odd personalities, including Gary Coleman, the former Commissioner of UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueBaseball, and a porn star.[[/note]] for the office. In 2012, an attempt to recall Wisconsin governor Scott Walker was defeated, making Gov. Walker the first governor in American history to survive a recall attempt (and only the third to be recalled).\\

* The '''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Party Federalist Party]]''' existed from 1789 until 1816. Formed by UsefulNotes/AlexanderHamilton, it argued for a strong central government, protectionism, and close ties to Great Britain. Though they dominated American politics in the 1790s, electing UsefulNotes/JohnAdams to the presidency in 1796, the Federalists were seen as the party of elitist Northern businessmen, limiting their national appeal (though they did, for a time, boast a sizable PeripheryDemographic in South Carolina). Backlash over the Alien and Sedition Acts, the feud between Adams and Hamilton during the 1800 election, Hamilton's death in 1804, and the lead-in to the UsefulNotes/WarOf1812 marginalized the Federalists; by the final years of their existence, they were a regional party restricted to New York and New England. After the 1816 election, the Federalists ceased to exist; in 1820, they could put up a vice-presidential candidate but not a presidential one.

* The ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Union_Party_(United_States) National Union Party]]'', similarly, only existed for one election in 1864. Abraham Lincoln rebranded the Republican Party to encourage support from pro-war Democrats unwilling to support Lincoln's opponent, George [=McClellan=], who ran on a plank of a negotiated peace with the Confederates. Lincoln named UsefulNotes/AndrewJohnson, the Governor of Tennessee and one of the few Southern politicians to remain loyal to the Union, as his running mate to stress his policy of reunion. Lincoln won reelection, but was assassinated soon afterwards and replaced by Johnson. As Johnson clashed with congressional Republicans over his Reconstruction policy, he attempted to keep the National Union Party alive as a distinct organization for moderate Democrats and Republicans who supported his leniency towards the South; in fall of 1866, Johnson hosted a National Union convention in Philadelphia. But Johnson's candidates lost that year's midterm elections in a landslide, and though a handful of congressmen were elected under the National Union ticket, after Johnson left office in 1869 the Party ceased to exist.

* The ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Union_Party_(United_States) Union Party]]'', similarly, only existed for one election in 1864. This was a rebranding of the Republican Party by Abraham Lincoln to encourage support from pro-war Democrats unwilling to support Lincoln's opponent, George [=McClellan=], who ran on a plank of a negotiated peace with the Confederates. Lincoln named UsefulNotes/AndrewJohnson, the Governor of Tennessee and one of the few Southern politicians to remain loyal to the Union, as his running mate to stress his policy of reunion. Lincoln won reelection, but was assassinated soon afterwards and replaced by Johnson. As Johnson clashed with congressional Republicans over his Reconstruction policy, he attempted to keep the National Union Party alive as a distinct organization for moderate Democrats and Republicans who supported his leniency towards the South; in fall of 1866, Johnson hosted a National Union convention in Philadelphia. But Johnson's candidates lost that year's midterm elections in a landslide, and though a handful of congressmen were elected under the National Union Ticket, after Johnson left office in 1869 the Party ceased to exist.

[[folder:Elections and Electoral Strategies]]
We don't need to get too deep into the logistical details of American elections, though it's an interesting subject if you want to know more. Only five states hold their gubernatorial elections in odd-numbered years (also known as off-year elections): Louisiana, Kentucky, Virginia, New Jersey and Virginia. Every other state elects governors during even years, either in concert with the presidential election or with the Congressional midterm elections. Many cities, however, hold off-year elections for mayor, city council and other offices -- New York City is the most prominent example.\\
\\
To speak very generally, elections in the United States are about two basic dynamics: turnout and persuasion. Candidates are looking to get as many of their reliable voters to the polls as possible, while also trying to convince coveted persuadable voters to support them. The interaction of these two efforts is quite complicated, and every strategist and pundit puts a different weight on one of those two variables.\\
\\
[[/folder]]

Thus, a lot of campaign drama ends up happening in 'swing' or 'battleground' states, states that have become strategically important in the election. Since each senator counts for one electoral vote, it's the ''smaller'' states that have a disproportionately large influence in the Electoral College. To win these states, presidential hopefuls spend millions upon millions of dollars on advertising, travel, staff, and various other campaign expenses, all for a job which pays a mere $400,000 per year over four years. (Seriously--you can make more money running a school district.) And yet, the winner is largely in charge of how the American government spends its revenue. The irony of this is not lost on the American people.\\

[[quoteright:281:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/beltway_231.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:281:Caution: Reality outside 495 may differ from reality inside 495.]]\\

The vice president, in contrast, has little authority and more often functions as a government spokesperson. The vice presidency might be the cushiest job in the world because it comes with ''absolutely nothing to do'' unless one of two things fails: the president's heartbeat or the Senate. To be more precise, they officially have two jobs. The first is basically to sit around and wait for the President of the United States to drop dead (or otherwise become incapable of carrying out the duties of the office of President); the second is to act as President of the Senate with nothing to do and no right to vote, except cast a tie-breaking vote if there is a deadlock.\\

!!!The Electoral College

!!!The Cabinet, Executive Departments, and Independent Agencies

!!!Additionally …

Elected representatives of the 50 states meet in the District of Columbia, which consists entirely of one city, UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC. Note that distinction: DC is ''in'' the United States, but not ''of'' them.[[note]]This is to prevent it from being too heavily affected by any one state's petty local politics. UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}} was the original capital until the UsefulNotes/{{Pennsylvania}} state legislature effectively [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Mutiny_of_1783 holding Congress hostage in 1783]] convinced everyone else this was a bad idea.[[/note]] The result includes the oddity that the citizens of DC -- despite paying taxes -- have no voting representation in the legislative branch (merely a non-voting representative), and until 1961 couldn't vote in presidential elections. This is {{irony}} from the country that revolted under the battle cry, "No taxation without representation!" The city's residents are disgruntled about it enough that the official DC automobile license plate reads "Taxation Without Representation." To people who live in DC (though not so much the people who work there, many of whom live in bedroom communities across state lines, further complicating the issue of local politics), this is so serious that, when the city got its [[RuleOfThree third]] UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueBaseball franchise, the local population didn't want a third team bearing the name Washington Senators, because, although at any given time, 100 senators are tasked with working ''in'' Washington, the District itself has none of its own.\\

UsefulNotes/TheUnitedStates is a [[UsefulNotes/AmericanFederalism federal]] republic consisting principally of [[UsefulNotes/TheSeveralStates 50 states]]. When people of other nations are trying to understand the rather odd political behavior of the USA, they would do well to remember that the United States is literally just that: fifty individual states, each with its own constitution, all under the aegis of a central federal government. The relationship between the federal government and the state governments can get contentious, to the point that there [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar was a civil war about it.]]

Elected representatives of the 50 states meet in the District of Columbia, which consists entirely of one city, UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC. Note that distinction: DC is ''in'' the United States, but not ''of'' them.[[note]]This is to prevent it from being too heavily affected by any one state's petty local politics. UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}} was the original capital until the UsefulNotes/{{Pennsylvania}} state legislature effectively [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Mutiny_of_1783 holding Congress hostage in 1783]] convinced everyone else this was a bad idea.[[/note]] The result includes the oddity that the citizens of DC -- despite paying taxes -- have no voting representation in the legislative branch (merely a non-voting representative), and until 1961 couldn't vote in presidential elections. This is {{irony}} from the country that revolted under the battle cry, "No taxation without representation!" The city's residents are disgruntled about it enough that the official DC automobile license plate reads "Taxation Without Representation." To people who live in DC (though not so much the people who work there, many of whom live in bedroom communities across state lines, further complicating the issue of local politics), this is so serious that, when the city got its [[RuleOfThree third]] UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueBaseball franchise, the local population didn't want a third team bearing the name Washington Senators, because, although at any given time, 100 senators are tasked with working ''in'' Washington, the District itself has none of its own.

[[caption-width-right:281:Caution: Reality outside 495 may differ from reality inside 495.]]

There is a feeling among some Americans that there may be a reality distortion field of some sort that follows the outer edge of the Capital Beltway (a highway that circles D.C.). Attempts to prove this fail to obtain federal funding.

Since the United States is a republic, you will occasionally find people trying to tell you that the United States "is not a democracy". This is ''debatably'' true, since a republic and a democracy are technically two different forms of government, but a republic can still use democratic processes. So ask the person saying this what they mean before nodding sagely. The essential issue here is that the founders thought direct democracy (after the fashion of, say, [[UsefulNotes/AncientGreece ancient Athens]]) was a generally bad idea. For example, UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson claimed "''A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.''" More colloquially: "Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on dinner." That said, direct democracy does in fact exist on smaller levels in the United States, namely the "town meeting" form of government often practiced in the New England states, in which citizens may show up to vote directly on town laws and ordinances, as well as poll-style voting utilized in some states to vote on specific laws (signs reading "Vote YES/NO on Prop. 47" or something similar will, more often than not, be ubiquitous in such states come election season). The debate over to what extent the government should engage in majority-ruled democracy or function as a democratic republic, or whether ultimate authority should rest with a strong centralized government (federalism) or with the individual state (anti-federalism/confederacy) predates the existence of the country itself, and is still debated today, with citizens, politicians, and pundits alike jumping from one side to the other (depending on which would result in their side of an issue winning).

Unlike many other nations, the US has had precisely one written constitution since independence in 1776,[[note]]Kinda. The Constitution was ratified in 1789; the [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution Articles of Confederation]] were a wash and [[CanonDiscontinuity don't count]].[[/note]] which is referred to simply as "the Constitution". This makes it the second oldest written national constitution still in effect,[[note]]The oldest, the constitution of UsefulNotes/SanMarino, went into effect in 1600.[[/note]] and the third oldest still in effect overall.[[note]]The Constitution of Massachusetts, drafted by UsefulNotes/JohnAdams, Samuel Adams, and James Bowdoin, went into effect in 1780 and had significant influence on the federal one.[[/note]] The Constitution defines itself as "the supreme law of the land", and all other statutes and acts of government must defer to it or be rendered null and void. Since its drafting, the US Constitution has served as an inspiration for many other written constitutions around the globe. Indeed, it was the USA that [[TropeCodifier popularized]] the codified constitution -- of the nations of the world, only UsefulNotes/{{Britain}}, UsefulNotes/NewZealand, and UsefulNotes/{{Israel}} have uncodified constitutions, something which law students from those countries continue to lament bitterly come finals time.

The Constitution is not set in stone. To date, there have been 27 amendments, the first ten of which are referred to collectively as the Bill of Rights and were adopted before the Constitution was even ratified. This gives you an idea of how hard the amendment process is -- 17 afterthoughts, one of which is in there to repeal an earlier afterthought (18 and 21, the Prohibition amendments). Not only that, but the 27th Amendment was actually proposed with the Bill of Rights -- it took some 200 years between proposal and ratification (not surprising, seeing as it limits Congress in giving itself raises). As a result of its stability and endurance, arguably-most Americans have a deep respect for the Constitution -- a respect that can become downright reverential for some people. This makes it really quite difficult even to get a movement to ''propose'' an amendment, to the frustration of many aspiring reformers.

The Constitution delineates the structure of the federal government. It sets up a separation of powers between three separate branches: the executive, legislative, and judicial. Following that lead, we will chunk up this article along those lines.

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:The Executive Branch]]

The executive branch of government comprises the President, Vice President, and the Cabinet.\\

Unlike in many other nations, the US president is both head of state and head of government. The president's principal powers are to sign or veto bills approved by Congress and to appoint Cabinet secretaries, ambassadors, Supreme Court judges, and other federal judges (all with Senate approval), to sign treaties (subject to congressional approval) and to issue pardons (which are not subject to anyone's approval). The president is also the commander-in-chief of the military and is the highest-ranking individual in the chain of command, though they are not personally considered part of the military.[[note]]Even if they were a military officer before becoming president their former rank is now meaningless as far as the chain of command is concerned. For example, UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower was a five-star general before becoming president but then reclaimed his rank after his presidency ended. Of course, as far as the Army was concerned, the difference in who Eisenhower could give orders to as president versus as a five-star general amounted to, basically, "Omar Bradley."[[/note]] The president may issue "executive orders", directives to the Cabinet instructing them on the enforcement of laws. Most executive orders are generally kept running by the next president in line, as presidents protect the prerogatives of the office, though this trend has fallen off as presidents have gotten a lot more eager to issue the orders along ideological lines. All those powers and responsibilities get summed up under the amorphous heading of "leadership", with all the free credit and lightning-rod for dissatisfaction that that entails. You don't have to be crazy to run for President. The Office will do that for you -- or, if you're cynical, to you.\\

The vice president, in contrast, has little authority and more often functions as a government spokesperson. The vice presidency might be the cushiest job in the world because there is ''absolutely nothing to do'' unless one of two things fails: the president's heartbeat or the Senate. To be more precise, they officially have two jobs. The first is basically to sit around and wait for the President of the United States to drop dead (or otherwise become incapable of carrying out the duties of the office of President); the second is to act as President of the Senate with nothing to do and no right to vote, except cast a tie-breaking vote if there is a deadlock.

Unofficially, however, the vice president actually does have a lot of important work to do. In general, there are three kinds of veep: the advisor/enforcer, the ticket-balancer, and the consolation prize, or as [[Creator/{{MSNBC}} Chris Matthews]] has called them, the January,[[note]]This kind of [[TheLancer lancer]] is to help when the new president starts governing.[[/note]] the November,[[note]]This is to help win votes in the general election.[[/note]] and the August.[[note]]This is to shore up a weak candidate with the party's base going into the convention.[[/note]]
* The first kind has become increasingly common since UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, particularly when the president is a highly-electable populistic type and ''most'' particularly when the president is basically new to Washington. This sort of VP is effectively chosen to be a Secretary without Portfolio, providing advice on anything and everything and/or bringing political muscle and Washington connections to the administration. Indeed, the only major-party vice-presidential candidates since 1948 (the first post-UsefulNotes/WorldWarII presidential election) who had neither served in Congress nor held high-level executive-branch positions have been three Republican governors: UsefulNotes/SarahPalin (of UsefulNotes/{{Alaska}}, 2008), UsefulNotes/SpiroAgnew (of Maryland, 1968), and Earl Warren (of UsefulNotes/{{California}}, 1948). Almost all the rest have been sitting members of Congress (usually senators); the exceptions are Sargent Shriver,[[note]]He held several appointed executive positions and was in private legal practice in D.C. when nominated by the Democrats in 1972; also brother-in-law of Democratic icon UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy.[[/note]] UsefulNotes/GeorgeHWBush,[[note]]He was a former congressman from Texas, ambassador to the UsefulNotes/UnitedNations, "ambassador" to the [[RedChina People's Republic of China]] (technically, he was "Chief of the Liaison Office", but this was during the transition period from full US recognition of [[UsefulNotes/{{Taiwan}} the ROC]] to full US recognition of the PRC under Nixon, Ford, and Carter), and [[UsefulNotes/{{CIA}} Director of Central Intelligence]], and was in private business and academia when nominated by the Republicans in 1980.[[/note]] and UsefulNotes/DickCheney.[[note]]He had been the congressman from Wyoming and House Minority Whip, White House Chief of Staff under Ford, and Secretary of Defense under Papa Bush, and was running Halliburton when nominated by the Republicans in 2000.[[/note]]
* The second kind has historically been the most common: the presidential candidate would pick (or have picked) a running mate from a different region or ideological orientation from the candidate himself. Thus, if the Democratic presidential candidate was a Northern liberal, you'd expect the running mate to be a Southern or Western moderate or conservative -- or any combination of these terms. The classic example is UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson, a pragmatic Protestant Texan specifically chosen to retain the Southern vote that UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy as a liberal Catholic Yankee might not have gotten otherwise.[[note]]Most southerners who could vote for President at that time voted for Democratic candidates, but anti-Catholicism was quite strong there too. Religion had overridden party loyalty in 1928, when Democratic nominee Alfred Smith, the first major-party Catholic presidential nominee in the U.S., had carried only ''six'' formerly-Confederate states (whereas all eleven of them had voted Democratic in eleven of the previous twelve presidential elections).[[/note]]
** Another classic example occurred in 1864, when Republican UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln chose War Democrat UsefulNotes/AndrewJohnson from Tennessee as his running mate, when the Republican Party temporarily changed its name to the National Union Party, hoping to preserve the Union by gaining support from War Democrats and border states. Of course, this resulted in Johnson taking office for nearly a full term, placing a de facto Democrat in the White House and warning all future candidates against taking this strategy too far.
** Also, this was the reasoning behind the choices of the three women that so far have been picked as major-party vice-presidential candidates: UsefulNotes/GeraldineFerraro, UsefulNotes/SarahPalin, and UsefulNotes/KamalaHarris. Ferraro was added to Democrat UsefulNotes/WalterMondale's ticket in 1984 mainly to build support in the future; it was thought that Mondale's campaign against popular incumbent UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan was hopeless (and it ultimately was), so putting a woman on the ticket would help the Democrats curry favor with female voters in the future. Meanwhile, the 2008 Republican candidate, UsefulNotes/JohnMcCain, was under pressure on both the left and the right. From the right, he had a reputation for being such a moderate Republican, many conservatives declared that they'd vote for UsefulNotes/HillaryRodhamClinton or a third party over him. From the left, [=McCain=] had the misfortune of being a stuffy old white guy running against Barack "Hope and Change" Obama, a dynamic young black guy who himself had just emerged from a tough Democratic primary campaign against a rival who also wasn't an old white guy -- the aforementioned Hillary Clinton, who still had a lot of supporters in the party. It was thought that Palin, being both ultra-conservative and a woman, would solve both problems simultaneously. And in Harris's case, who was selected as Joe Biden's running mate for the 2020 presidential election, gender was only one of the aspects involved; Harris was also only the third person of color (after Obama and Charles Curtis, Herbert Hoover's VP) to run on a major presidential ticket and the first woman of color to do so, was much younger than the 77-year-old Biden, and had disagreed politically with Biden on key questions in the past. While the first two times it backfired, [[note]]Ferraro and her husband's obtuse finances became a major issue in the campaign, and the revelation that she had a maid and a few million dollars tied up in real estate greatly undermined her "working-class immigrant's daughter" image. Palin, meanwhile, proved to be a gaffe machine and a publicity hound stealing the spotlight from [=McCain=], with a severe lack of depth in foreign policy; Creator/TinaFey's famous "I can see UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} from my house!" joke was based on Palin citing her home state of Alaska (where she was governor) being just over the Bering Strait from Russia as a foreign policy qualification. In both cases, they were ultimately seen by many voters as "token" candidates, having not been properly vetted by campaigns more interested in making a splash than in having strong running mates.[[/note]] Harris ''was'' a strong running mate, as she was fairly popular in her own right and was clearly competent. Perhaps not coincidentally, this ticket succeeded where the previous two had failed.
* The third kind was more common in the past: someone who ran for president and lost the nomination would [[ConsolationPrize be given the running mate's slot to soothe his ego.]] LBJ, who ran for the Democratic nomination in 1960, is the closest thing to this since UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, as it was well-known that he wanted the top job himself. Along with the ticket-balancing issue and his Washington connections (which were a bit more extensive than Kennedy's), he was the perfect VP candidate. His actual presidency makes this situation either {{hilarious|InHindsight}} or [[HarsherInHindsight more gut-wrenching.]] Bush Sr. may have been this as well, as he competed with UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan in the 1980 Republican primaries. His victory in the Iowa caucus actually forced Reagan to replace his campaign manager and reorganize his staff. Joe Biden might also have been picked for this reason, as despite his serious case of [[OpenMouthInsertFoot foot-in-mouth disease]], he had run two (notably unsuccessful) presidential campaigns (in 1988 and 2008) and was seen as something of an elder statesman in the Democratic Party.

UsefulNotes/JohnAdams, the very first vice president, described his office as "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." John Nance Garner, UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt's first vice president, was more direct, describing the vice presidency as "not worth a bucket of warm piss".[[note]]So direct, in fact, that for years this phrase was {{bowdlerise}}d as "not worth a bucket of warm ''spit''".[[/note]] (Ironically, FDR went on to become one of the few presidents to have died in office, although Roosevelt had ditched Garner long before.)\\

At several points in American history the vice president has been, in effect, the Highest Elected Patsy, and has "taken the fall" for the administration. Since UsefulNotes/WorldWarII (where UsefulNotes/HarrySTruman didn't know about the Manhattan Project until he got promoted), the VP has gained more influence, but it varies between administrations -- Dick Cheney was seen as very powerful, Joe Biden less so.\\

A presidential term lasts four years, and an individual president is limited to two terms, with the total time in office not to exceed ten years. In other words, a vice president who ascended to the presidency more than halfway through one four-year term could run for re-election twice, as Lyndon Johnson was eligible to do (though he chose not to because backlash against UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar had made him increasingly unpopular). Originally a tradition, this was later codified in the Constitution through the 22nd Amendment in 1951, after Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to four consecutive terms, only leaving office because he died early in his fourth term. Presidential elections are held every four years, on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.\\

Actually, ''all'' elections are held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in the month of the election. This has twisted, complicated historical reasons. The founding fathers didn't want the election to fall on the first of the month, because business owners would be balancing their checkbooks on this day.[[note]]After breaking free from England, the Founding Fathers valued the right to conduct free enterprise as they chose.[[/note]] Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday were out of the question, as those were religious days for many (the latter being a sabbatical day for many agrarian communities). Friday and Monday were then excluded, as those days surrounded the weekends. British elections were on Thursdays, and Americans wanted to break free from British traditions. Tuesday was then the best choice, ''but'', if the election were on the first Tuesday of the month, then in some years, the Electoral College would then convene over a month after the election, a violation of existing laws. Finally, the election was set to be held on the Tuesday after the first Monday.\\

Historically, the president is a white Protestant, though not always. UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy was Catholic, which was a big deal, and UsefulNotes/BarackObama's father was a black African man, which was an even ''bigger'' deal. Historically, the president has also always been male, though fiction has delighted in depicting female presidents and the possibility is considered nigh inevitable by now. In fact, UsefulNotes/HillaryRodhamClinton came ''very'' close to being chosen as the Democratic candidate for president in 2008, was considered a virtual lock for the position until Obama's rise to prominence, and made history (again) by clinching the nomination after a much more successful primary fight in 2016. Both these generalizations apply equally well to the vice president (three times a woman has been a major party's nomination for veep, the Democrats first picking Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Kamala Harris in 2020, and the Republicans picking Sarah Palin in 2008; UsefulNotes/HerbertHoover's VP, Charles Curtis, was three-eighths Native American; Joe Biden was the first Catholic VP before going on to be president himself with Harris as veep).\\

Article 2, clause 5 of the Constitution doesn't really go into race or sex, probably because in 1787 it was automatically assumed that candidates would always be white men, but it does have some qualifications:
* 35 years of age or more.
* 14 years residency.
* Natural-born citizen (read: U.S. citizen by birth, rather than by naturalization) OR citizen at the time the Constitution was adopted.[[note]]The latter was necessary because at the time of the Constitution's adoption, the United States had only existed for seven years, meaning that the election of 1812 was the first in which it was mathematically possible for a natural-born citizen to meet the 35 years of age requirement and going for more than 20 years without a president was obviously not an option.[[/note]]

Note the requirement is technically a little more flexible than "only native-born", but unless you were alive in September 1787 ''and'' living between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean, it's pretty much limited to the native born. Either way, John [=McCain=] (who was born in the Panama Canal Zone) qualified.[[note]]"Any person born in the Canal Zone on or after February 26, 1904, and whether before or after the effective date of this chapter, whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such person was or is a citizen of the United States, is declared to be a citizen of the United States."--8 USC § 1403[[/note]] One can be born anywhere on Earth (or space) and still be a "natural-born citizen" of the U.S. if at least one of your parents is an American citizen who has lived in the U.S. for five years. A person born within the territorial boundaries of the United States is a natural-born citizen regardless of parentage, unless said person's parents are foreign diplomats or members of an invading force.\\

The only two presidents who have ever been truly challenged for being ineligible to date are Barack Obama and UsefulNotes/ChesterAArthur. Challengers to Obama claimed that he was actually born in UsefulNotes/{{Kenya}} and that his Hawaiian birth certificate and newspaper birth announcements were forgeries, no doubt by the same people who orchestrated the Area 51 coverup.[[note]]Even if it were true, he would still be a natural-born U.S. citizen because his mother was one, and while he was born after that law took effect, under the statutes of the time he was born he only needed to live in the U.S. for a few years to be considered a natural-born U.S. citizen, which his academic record more than verifies.[[/note]] President Obama originally chose to ignore the allegations, likely perceiving them of beneath his attention, but eventually got so annoyed that he released his long-form birth certificate, then splashed it on a mug with the slogan "Made in the USA" and killed UsefulNotes/OsamaBinLaden about two days later, which effectively shut up all but the noisiest of the "birther theorists." As for Chester Arthur, he was accused by Arthur Hinman of being born in UsefulNotes/{{Ireland}}. No one took up that story, so Hinman [[MovingTheGoalposts then claimed Chester had been born in]] UsefulNotes/{{Canada}}. Nobody could decide which was worse, so they elected Chester vice president. After Chester became ''president'', Hinman wrote a book called ''How a British Subject Became President of the United States''.\\

The positions of president and vice president were pretty well set up after 1800 as to who got them and what they did. The only real controversy occurred in 1841, when UsefulNotes/WilliamHenryHarrison became the first president to die in office. The Constitution's ExactWords said that should some circumstance (death, incapacitation, expulsion) keep the president from using the office's powers and fulfilling its responsibilities, "the Same shall devolve on the Vice President." Note that it doesn't explicitly say that the veep ''becomes'' president. The brouhaha was settled when Harrison's vice president, UsefulNotes/JohnTyler, just took the damn oath and did it anyway.[[note]]To modern people, the fact that this was considered controversial may be surprising, but Tyler's opponents actually referred to him with the mocking title "His Accidency."[[/note]] This was finally patched into law by the 25th Amendment in 1967.\\

Also, if the sitting president dies and the vice president takes the presidential oath, where do we get a ''new'' veep? Until the 25th Amendment was ratified, the office was just left empty. The first four people to ascend to the presidency never were elected to a full term.[[note]]In fact, none of them was even renominated: Tyler had been excommunicated from the Whig Party by 1844, UsefulNotes/MillardFillmore was denied renomination as his lenient attitude towards slavery made him unpopular with northern Whigs by 1852, UsefulNotes/AndrewJohnson's impeachment trial made him unpopular even with fellow Democrats by 1868, and Arthur's supporters were divided between him and another candidate in 1884, costing him the Republican nomination to a more unifying candidate in James G. Blaine, and thus never had a vice president.[[/note]] That amendment lets the sitting president just appoint a new vice president. This led to a man who never received even one electoral vote ascending to the presidency. In 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned over income tax evasion and was replaced by longtime UsefulNotes/{{Michigan}} congressman UsefulNotes/GeraldFord. The president at the time was UsefulNotes/RichardNixon. Compounding the magnitude of this provision, when Nixon resigned, Ford promptly pardoned the man who had just made him President, preventing Nixon from being put on trial for his various crimes.[[note]]He later cited this as MyGreatestFailure.[[/note]]\\

The 25th Amendment also allows a president to relinquish the office ''temporarily'' due to incapacitation. So far this has only been used when the president has to undergo some medical procedure that requires anesthesia, so that if something truly terrible happens while the president is knocked out, there will be an acting president who can take action immediately without provoking a constitutional conflict. It's never happened and may never, but why take the risk? The 25th Amendment further allows the VP and a majority of the Cabinet to declare a president unfit for duty and remove him, even against his will, causing the VP to become acting president immediately. This is a safety valve of obvious last resort and has never yet been invoked in practice, though some very noisy voices suggested that controversial President UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump should have been ousted using it. ''Film/AirForceOne'' and ''Series/TwentyFour'' have both used it for its dramatic possibilities, though.\\

The Constitution itself lets Congress decide what happens if both President and Vice President of the United States are gone. Currently, this falls under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947. It goes from President, to Vice President, to Speaker of the House, to President ''pro tempore'' of the Senate, to the Cabinet members in order of the Cabinet post's longevity. Since the US hasn't gone past 'vice president' yet on the list, the fact that it ends at the Cabinet hasn't been tested. A person in the line of succession must satisfy the constitutional eligibility requirement -- a foreign-born cabinet officer (e.g., Elaine Chao, who led the Labor and Transportation departments under Bush 43 and Trump respectively)[[note]]German-born Henry Kissinger, who as Nixon's Secretary of State would have gotten as close as ''third'' in line if not for the natural-born citizen requirement, is an even better example.[[/note]] would be passed over.\\

The Secret Service designates one member of the line of succession the "Designated Survivor" to stay behind at any event where the entire line could be zapped, which is pretty much only the State of the Union Address (where the President, Vice President, both houses of Congress, the entire Cabinet, and the Supreme Court are all gathered together in a single building). It's always a minor Cabinet member, too. So yes, one night a year, there's a chance that [[Series/BattlestarGalactica2003 the Secretary of Education]], [[Series/DesignatedSurvivor the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development]], or the [[ComicBook/YTheLastMan Secretary of Agriculture]] could end up as President.\\

* UsefulNotes/WarrenHarding (elected in 1920) died of a stroke in 1923, after numerous scandals perpetrated by his cabinet members destroyed his credibility.

UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan, notably, broke the curse. He was elected in 1980, then was shot and badly wounded in 1981 but survived the attack, and the Twenty-Year Curse seems to have ended, as UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush got elected in 2000 and served (and survived) two full terms. This doesn't mean there weren't assassination attempts made on other presidents; thankfully, however, none has been killed.

Each state boasts a number of electors equal to its congressional representation: two senators plus however many representatives. When the College meets, about one month after the election, each state's electors vote for the presidential candidates. Each state is allowed to set its own laws for how the electors vote, but in recent years 48 states have granted all their votes to whomever received the largest number of popular votes in their state; Maine and Nebraska are the outliers, giving two electoral votes to the statewide popular-vote winner and one more to the person who wins in each of their congressional districts.\\

There have been numerous attempts throughout the years to reform the system but none has succeeded. The closest anyone ever got was early in the Nixon administration in 1969, when he and Congress attempted to implement a system that would eliminate the EC and use a run-off between the top two vote-getters if no one got over 50% in the first round. It sailed through the House on a huge margin but couldn’t get over the hump in the Senate or state legislatures because of Dixiecrat opposition. It came up a dozen votes short of earning the necessary supermajority in the Senate, was filibustered, and then died when the congressional term ended.\\

Thus, a lot of campaign drama ends up happening in 'swing' or 'battleground' states, states that have become strategically important in the election. Since each senator counts for one electoral vote, it's the ''smaller'' states that have a disproportionately large influence in the Electoral College. To win these states, presidential hopefuls spend millions upon millions of dollars on advertising, travel, staff, and various other campaign expenses, all for a job which pays a mere $400,000 per year over four years. (Seriously--you can make more money running a school district.) And yet, the winner is largely in charge of how the American government spends its revenue. The irony of this is not lost on the American people.

The average American (excluding the editors of the [[http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=GOVMAN U.S. Government Manual]] & [[http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=CDIR the Congressional Directory]], and maybe Creator/TomClancy) [[SmallReferencePools has heard of maybe two or three of these guys]], maybe four if they keep up enough with current events or teach political science, usually taken from the 'Big Four' quartet: the Secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, and the Attorney General, positions that date back to the literal Washington administration. The Cabinet typically also includes the Vice President, the President’s Chief of Staff, and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Unlike in many other countries, the cabinet meetings are not the avenue where major policy decisions are made in foreign and military affairs: that takes place in the National Security Council where only the relevant officials participate, such as the President, Vice President, and Secretaries of State and Defense (the Secretary of Education, for instance, doesn’t need to know of diplomatic talks with a crazy playboy dictator, weapons sales to UsefulNotes/{{Israel|isWithInfraredMissiles}}, or the invasion plans of the next Middle Eastern oil state waiting in line).\\

Had enough of secretaries? [[UpToEleven In addition, Defense contains a raft of sub-departments]], known as military departments (Department of the Army, Department of the Navy, and Department of the Air Force) which include all the armed forces (except for the UsefulNotes/CoastGuard, which operates under Homeland Security during peacetime and under the Department of the Navy during war or at the president's discretion), and they are led by their very own secretaries, namely the Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of the Navy (or [[Series/{{NCIS}} SECNAV as the special agents]] [[Series/{{JAG}} and service members alike call him or her]]), and the Secretary of the Air Force who are subordinates of the Secretary of Defense. Each of those secretaries, as you might have guessed, has their very own under secretary, and at least four assistant secretaries (five in the Army) each.\\

Furthermore, Defense includes several large joint organizations (meaning that civilians and military personnel from all services participate) such as the [[UsefulNotes/{{NSA}} National Security Agency]] (the people who know that you’re reading this article), the National Reconnaissance Office (the people whose satellites can spot insects on your lawn), the Defense Logistics Agency (big bloated defense bureaucracy in action) and DARPA (mad scientists studying brain implants). For more on the stiff but nevertheless crazy world of the U.S. military see UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks.\\

** Trump would later be impeached a second time with more bipartisan support in January 2021 for inciting an attempted coup against Congress in his favor after months of contesting Biden's electoral victory, as well as for pressuring the Georgia Secretary of State to fabricate votes in his favor. Despite his acquittal, he holds the distinction of being the only president in US history to be impeached twice, as well as the first to have his trial occur after leaving office; Johnson, Clinton, and Trump's prior trials were held while they were still the incumbent.[[note]]Trump's second impeachment trial was held after he left because (A) his offenses occurred less than a month before the end of his term, and (B) because there was/is a very strong likelihood that he could run for the office again, which he himself has hinted at.[[/note]]

Senate seniority, by the way, is a funny thing. There are two types: seniority in the general body, and seniority in terms of a state. Seniority is decided by length of tenure in the Senate, so a senator can be quite senior and still be the "junior senator" of a particular state. And yes, the senior senator of one state can be junior to the junior senator of another state. The most senior "junior senator" is Maria Cantwell of Washington, who took office in 2001; the most junior "senior senator" is Jon Ossoff of Georgia, who took office in 2021 on the same day as his state’s junior senator Raphael Warnock, after they won runoff elections for both of the state's Senate seats held on the same day. Seniority among an incoming class -- i.e. a group of newly elected senators sworn in on the same day -- is determined by former service in order as senator, vice president, House member, cabinet secretary, governor, by state population as of the most recent census, and finally by the length of the term they were first elected to. So, if two senators from the same state were sworn in on the same day, neither with any prior governmental service, the senator elected to a full six-year term would be senior to the senator elected to finish a predecessor's term.[[note]]This is why Ossoff is senior to Warnock -- the former ran for a seat that was due to be contested, while the latter ran in a special election.[[/note]] Whew!\\

Members of Congress, of either house, are often identified in the media with a hyphenated suffix that abbreviates their affiliation and state -- "D-CA", for example, indicates a Democrat from California, while "R-IN" would refer to a Republican from Indiana, and "[[TakeAThirdOption I-VT]]" would refer to UsefulNotes/BernieSanders from Vermont.\\

As an added bonus, either time during this process when a bill is in the Senate, a senator determined to block the passage of a bill (either to kill it outright, or, in the first round, to tie it up until certain changes are made to its content) can "filibuster" its vote by lodging endless procedural motions to delay a vote, or simply getting up and [[HoldingTheFloor talking for as long as possible]] until the bill's proponents get tired and go home, or (again, in the first round) concede to enough changes to its content that the filibuster is dropped. The record for a speech on the Senate floor is ''24 hours and 18 minutes''.[[note]]Strom Thurmond of UsefulNotes/SouthCarolina gave that speech against the 1957 Civil Rights Act.[[/note]] Indeed, it takes more votes to end debate and bring a bill to a final vote -- 60 votes, or three-fifths of the Senate -- than it does to pass the bill itself once it comes to a vote. Nowadays senators don't usually bother getting up and speaking for hours. If 41 can get together and express an intention to filibuster, then the threat alone is enough to stop the bill in its tracks. Scrapping the filibuster entirely -- the so-called "nuclear option" -- has been considered by various blocs over the years. The general feeling has been that for a majority party to do so would weaken their position if and when they become the minority party. A reform was passed in 2011 that made filibusters slightly more difficult to carry out, though time will tell what effect (if any) it has on Senate business.\\

If Congress is still in session (i.e. hasn't adjourned), the bill automatically becomes law. Why this is isn't clear. There's no formal name for this method (although "default enactment" has started to gain currency among scholars), but some civics teachers have been known to call it the "stuff-it-in-your-desk" route or "pocket enactment". A president can also use this strategically: a bill that would cause a huge uproar if it failed to become law, but which the president dislikes on principle, can go into the presidential desk. This allows him to say "I didn't sign the bill; I merely let it become law." This isn't used as often as the pocket veto, but the possibility did come up in late 2011.[[note]]Obama was faced with a defense appropriations bill that included a provision that explicitly authorized the Justice Department to detain American citizens accused of terrorism without charge. Obama thought that this was ridiculous and an offense to American values, but he couldn't be seen to be vetoing a defense appropriations bill--i.e. the bill that keeps the military supplied for the next year. In the end, he chose to sign the bill but include a signing statement--long story--saying that ''his'' administration would never actually detain anyone, but the fact remains that a default enactment was on the table and could have done the same thing.[[/note]]\\

Please note, however, that this was something [[DevelopersForesight most of the Founders could see coming]], on account of America's legal tradition, UsefulNotes/TheCommonLaw inherited from England. Interpretation of statutes has always been within the purview of common-law courts, and on the logic that the Constitution is a super-statute which justifies and overrides every other statute (i.e., law), the Court took it upon itself to interpret it as well (the decision in ''Marbury'' v. ''Madison'' makes this point). ''Stare decisis'' (the rule that once a judicial decision is made, it stands forever) is part and parcel of the common-law system, as anyone who knows anything about English (or Canadian or UsefulNotes/{{Australia}}n or…) law can tell you. However, two features make the American version of ''stare decisis'' interesting:

The Court is led by the Chief Justice (currently John Roberts, appointed by George W. Bush in 2005), a position that has the duties of chairing any meeting of the Court for both selection of cases to review and ruling on said cases. However, he or she does not have more power in any actual vote, although they ''do'' have a cooler robe. The Chief Justice also has the constitutional duty of presiding over any impeachments of the President or Vice President (but not other officers), and traditionally administers the Oath of Office to new presidents and Supreme Court justices (including his or her successor) unless unavailable (UsefulNotes/CalvinCoolidge was sworn in by his father, a notary public, after learning of UsefulNotes/WarrenHarding's death, and UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson was sworn in by a federal district court judge, on-board UsefulNotes/AirForceOne in Dallas, shortly after Kennedy's assassination). The Chief Justice is also administrator of the Federal Court System, making the position the technical equivalent of a cabinet secretary. UsefulNotes/WilliamHowardTaft is the only person to have ever served both as President and as Chief Justice.[[note]]He wanted to be the latter all his life. UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt had handpicked him as his successor from the Republican Party when he stood down for the 1908 presidential election and he went on to serve a full term. When Harding had the opportunity to nominate a new chief justice just after being inaugurated in 1921, he chose Taft.[[/note]]\\

There are, at present, 50 states in the Union. Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia are called Commonwealths in their full names, but are still states. There are also the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, which are possessions of the United States and not states at all. Clear as mud so far? Good, because it gets muddier and more interesting as we go along.\\

In addition to these, four states have so-called "independent cities", which are cities that do not have a county government at all and deal directly with their state government. These can be found in Maryland (UsefulNotes/{{Baltimore}}), Missouri (UsefulNotes/StLouis), Nevada (Carson City), and Virginia (a total of 38). Under Virginia's constitution, any community that is incorporated as a "city" is completely separate from any county—even though a fair number of these communities also serve as county seats, as they were chosen as seats before seceding from the county.[[note]]For example, Charlottesville, home to the University of Virginia, is both an independent city and the seat of surrounding Albemarle County, located ''within'' and surrounded by the county, but not belonging to it.[[/note]] Several communities in the South Hampton Roads metro area of southeast Virginia are independent cities formed from former counties; Virginia Beach and Norfolk were formerly located in Princess Anne and Norfolk counties until the voters approved referendums with the independent city of Virginia Beach emerging from its consolidation with Princess Anne County, while Norfolk County became the independent cities of Norfolk and Chesapeake. This differs from cases such as UsefulNotes/NewOrleans, UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}}, and UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco, in which the city and county (or, in the case of New Orleans, parish) both nominally exist even though the governments are merged.\\

For an example of comparisons, the states of Iowa (56 thousand square miles/2.9 million people), Kansas (82k/2.6m), Oklahoma (69k/3.5m) Nebraska (77k/1.7m), UsefulNotes/{{Minnesota}} (87k/4.9m), and Colorado (104k/4.3m) as a region have over 476,000 square miles and 19.9 million people. But this entire region obviously deserves considerably less attention and less resources than UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity, which has 468 square miles and 18.8 million people, even though New York has 1/1000 of the area and fewer people.\\

Cities can be combined with a county (like UsefulNotes/{{Denver}} and UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco), cross county lines (like [[UsefulNotes/DFWMetroplex Dallas, in five different counties]]), exist outside any county (like Baltimore, St. Louis, and all 38 'cities' in Virginia), or take up entire counties and merge with the county governments (UsefulNotes/{{Nashville}} with Davidson County, Louisville, Kentucky with Jefferson County, and Carson City, Nevada with the former Ormsby county).[[note]]UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity's five boroughs are five separate counties, none of which has an independent government.[[/note]] Many metropolitan areas cross state boundaries, but cities are always in the same state (UsefulNotes/KansasCity, Missouri/Kansas is actually two separate cities, and UsefulNotes/{{Portland}}, Oregon forms a coterminous metropolitan area with Vancouver, Washington).\\

Separate from the states are several US territories, including Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa, that are also under American sovereignty. Thirty-one states were territories (or part of a territory) at one point, but these in particular have for various reasons never received statehood -- Puerto Rico in particular has had several referenda on the matter, all of which have been voted down by its citizens until the 2012 election, where a 61% majority voted in favor of statehood. Their citizens also receive United States citizenship, meaning that if they choose to "emigrate" to any state, they have no legal problems, with the exception of American Samoa who are considered "American Nationals". Unlike states, territories do not have voting representation in Congress; however, they also pay fewer federal taxes, so many would argue they got the better deal.

* The '''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_(United_States) Democratic Party]]''' is the oldest political party in the world. It's typically viewed as being center-left, although in most Western countries, they would be considered centrist or tepidly social-democratic. Somewhat socially liberal and fiscally left-wing (although they have a small fiscally conservative contingent, most famously represented by UsefulNotes/BillClinton, as well as a progressive faction represented today by people like UsefulNotes/BernieSanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez). Strongest in urban areas, towns anchored by major universities, the Northeast, and the West Coast, and among minorities, youth, and poor to working-class voters. As of the 2018 midterms, they control the House of Representatives, and as of the 2020 elections they also hold the Presidency and the Senate (albeit the latter by a margin of ''only the Vice-President'').

From the Civil War until shortly before UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, both parties were a hodgepodge of different groups and ideologies and had left and right wings. The Republicans were established from the remains of the leftist Whig Party and were originally a coalition between industrial interests, left-wing moral reformers, and black Southerners who viewed the GOP as the "party of [[UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln Lincoln]]", while the Democrats used to be a coalition between Northern labor and white ethnic communities on one hand and white landowners and former slaveholders in the South on the other, the latter ''also'' [[StillFightingTheCivilWar viewing the GOP as the "party of Lincoln"]]. During the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Democrats were further split into War Democrats and Peace Democrats ("Copperheads"), while the Radical Republicans were a faction that opposed Lincoln and the moderate Republicans, with the Radicals favoring strong punitive measures against the rebellious Southern states and pushing for immediate abolition of slavery as opposed to Lincoln and company's cautious approach.\\

Both major parties tend to have their own core of rich and elite constituencies and support from industries that provide much of the financial backing for each, though each party also usually exaggerates the degree to which its opponent is the "party of [insert your {{Acceptable Target|s}} industry of choice here]." The Republicans tend to garner support from small- to medium-sized business owners, oil/gas and manufacturing corporations, construction and contracting businesses, and most of the financial sector--groups that generally benefit from lower taxes and fewer regulations. The Democrats, meanwhile, are supported by lawyers and law firms, entertainment and technology companies (i.e. Hollywood and Silicon Valley), [[UsefulNotes/AmericanEducationalSystem higher education]], K–12 public school teachers, labor unions, and a smaller share of the financial industry--groups that tend to benefit from greater government aid and contracting. These interests are by no means exclusive, however, and most major industries and corporations tend to spread campaign contributions around, typically to incumbents, because they want to avoid angering either side and thus curry favor with whoever might be in office at the time. The influence of campaign money in politics is a very controversial issue in the United States, especially after the 2010 ''Citizens United'' v. ''FEC'' Supreme Court decision.\\

Geography is ''very'' important for understanding modern party lines. The South tends to be more conservative than the Northeast and Pacific West, and the Rocky Mountain West and the Midwest somewhere in the middle; unlike the parties themselves, this has stayed consistent for decades, most likely since the nation's inception. Today, and especially before about 1964, a Maine Republican might be more liberal than a Mississippi Democrat. Region even helps explain the parties' ideological realignment, as best seen in the political history of the American South: Southern Democrats had long used rhetoric of states rights to support the institution of slavery, and Northern Republicans under Lincoln ended slavery through federal action. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was championed by progressive Democrats and supported by progressives from both parties in most of the country, but it met fierce resistance in the South where conservative Democrats held most offices. Many of them left the Democrats, [[StartMyOwn started their own parties]], and eventually turned Republican when the GOP advocated states' rights as a platform; today, the Republicans have the strongest regional hold in the South. In other words: the politicians' parties changed, but their politics generally did not. On a more local level, one of the quickest ways to determine how someone likely votes is whether they live in an urban or rural environment: cities tend to attract and employ those who are most likely to align with liberal causes while rural communities tend to align more with conservatives. Once again, these are all generalizations, but they are useful for explaining a) why physical electoral maps often appear overwhelmingly red even when Democrats win majorities, b) why Republicans do so much better in state and local elections, and c) why suburbs are so hotly contested as electoral battlegrounds.\\

* The '''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Party Federalist Party]]''' existed from 1789 until 1816. Formed by UsefulNotes/AlexanderHamilton, it argued for a strong central government, free trade, and close ties to Great Britain. Though they dominated American politics in the 1790s, electing UsefulNotes/JohnAdams to the presidency in 1796, the Federalists were seen as the party of elitist Northern businessmen, limiting their national appeal (though they did, for a time, boast a sizable PeripheryDemographic in South Carolina). Backlash over the Alien and Sedition Acts, the feud between Adams and Hamilton during the 1800 election, Hamilton's death in 1804, and the lead-in to the UsefulNotes/WarOf1812 marginalized the Federalists; by the final years of their existence, they were a regional party restricted to New York and New England. After the 1816 election, the Federalists ceased to exist.

* The '''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_(United_States) Green Party]]''' is probably the most famous third party in the country, mainly thanks to the high-profile presidential run of Green Party candidate Ralph Nader in 2000. By any measure, they are quite leftist, supporting fair trade, pacifism, an end to the War on Drugs, local government, internationalism, very liberal views on civil liberties and social issues, opposition to the Patriot Act, and a strong welfare state -- in other words, not too far from other Green Parties worldwide and European-style social democrats. Their main focus, however, is environmentalism, as their name suggests. Supporters are often stereotyped as tree-hugging hippies and socialists. If you see a character in fiction who supports the Green Party, then he or she is probably a NewAgeRetroHippie or a GranolaGirl. Recently, Green Party ideology has started to be adapted by Democrats like Bernie Sanders.

Their initial goals were largely libertarian and financial in nature, including smaller government, lower taxes, states' rights, and opposition to the bailouts and growing government spending (especially deficit spending), but the specific goals of its constituent groups greatly broadened the movement's focus; in particular, illegal immigration, family values, and opposition to "Global Warming" climate change legislation have been taken up as additional planks by many local and regional groups. A few politicians, such as UsefulNotes/SarahPalin, Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, and Michele Bachmann, have frequently spoken at Tea Party events and are considered by outsiders as [[FaceOfTheBand the public face of the group]], but various groups remain and have no unified official leader. Their relationship with the Republican establishment was fraught, as they helped drive the nomination of UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump as the Republicans' presidential candidate in 2016, despite fierce opposition by the moderate and business wings of the party. Following his election, the movement has now essentially evolved into the dominant wing of the party, the "Tea Party" moniker mostly forgotten.

These are by no means the only third parties in the United States, or the oldest (none of the Greens, Libertarians, or Constitutionalists dates back earlier than 1970). Third parties have a long history in US politics, and have been known to take up issues that would later be co-opted by the major parties. Here are some of the more notable ones throughout history:

* The '''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Soil_Party Free Soil Party]]''' was a short-lived single-issue coalition party first formed for the 1848 presidential election when neither the Democrats nor Whigs put forward candidates who pledged not to extend slavery into Mexico. Anti-slavery members of both parties supported former Democrat president UsefulNotes/MartinVanBuren as a candidate, and though he failed to win a single state, the party collected over 10% of the popular vote, proving the growing importance of opposition to slavery in American politics. Several Free Soilers were elected to Congress before the coalition merged with the Republican Party in 1854, which likewise centered opposition to slavery as its core policy issue.

* The '''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Union_Party_(United_States) Constitutional Union Party]]''' existed solely for the 1860 presidential election, nominating UsefulNotes/{{Tennessee}} senator John Bell. An ad hoc organization of moderate Democrats, Southern Whigs, and Northern Know Nothings, they tried to offer a compromise between the antislavery Republicans and pro-slavery Democrats on the eve of UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar, asserting that the importance of America's continued union superseded arguments over slavery. Bell put in a respectable showing, winning three upper Southern states (Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky), but came in a distant third in the Electoral College behind UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln and Southern Democrat John Breckinridge (who had been UsefulNotes/JamesBuchanan's VP). The Party dissolved with the outbreak of the Civil War.
* The '''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_Party Prohibition Party]]''' was founded in 1869 to call for the [[DryCrusader restriction and prohibition of alcoholic substances]]. It had its greatest success in 1919, when national alcohol prohibition was enacted, causing it to change its message to calling for stricter enforcement of the ban. However, the growing distaste for prohibition cost them dearly, and the repeal of prohibition in 1933 set the party on a long decline. The party still exists, but in the last election, it only earned 643 votes -- a far cry from the days when they could win over a quarter of a million votes. By sheer twist of fate, they were responsible for the election of the first female mayor in American history, and did so completely by accident. For fun, take a look on their Wikipedia page and see where they held their conventions. Going down the list, it's kind of sad.

* There have been various groups that have been known as the '''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populist_Party#United_States Populist Party]]''' over the decades, but the most famous one is the '''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Party_(United_States) People's Party]]''', which existed from 1884 to 1908.[[note]]For those wondering, the other Populist Parties included [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Party_(United_States,_1971) a left-wing anti-war party]] in TheSeventies that took influence from the People's Party, and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populist_Party_(United_States,_1984) a far-right party]] that ran from 1984 to '96 which was chiefly a vehicle for white nationalists and militia types. Currently, there are two parties claiming the name, both with generally (though not doctrinaire) libertarian platforms. Bottom line, variants on "Populist Party" are, uh, popular with third parties across the political spectrum.[[/note]] The Populists were an agrarian movement born out of anger at falling crop prices and rising railroad rates, and called for economic action against the banks, the railroads and the merchants of the cities. A main plank in their platform was bringing an end to the gold standard and replacing it with the free coinage of silver currency, an issue that resonated among struggling farmers (rapid inflation would allow credit to flow more freely in rural areas and make it much easier to pay off debt). The Populists had their greatest success in 1892, when they won over a million votes and four western states. However, the 1896 campaign saw Democratic candidate UsefulNotes/WilliamJenningsBryan co-opting the Populists' support of free silver; they cross-endorsed him, but it was a stake through the heart for the movement. While the party withered into irrelevance after that, much of their platform, which included an eight-hour work day, civil service reforms, a graduated income tax, and direct election of senators, would be co-opted by the progressive movement in the early 20th century.
* There have been [[RuleOfThree three]] '''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Party#North_America Progressive Parties]]''', of which the most-well known is the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Party_(United_States,_1912) 1912 edition]], also known as the '''Bull Moose Party''', a vehicle for former President UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt's 1912 presidential run.[[note]]The other two were also candidate-driven; the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Party_(United_States,_1924–34) 1924 edition]] was an electoral vehicle for Wisconsin senator Robert M. La Follette, and continued for some time afterwards, primarily in Wisconsin and the Great Plains. The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Party_(United_States,_1948) 1948 edition]], meanwhile, was created by Henry Wallace as a left-wing challenge to Democratic President UsefulNotes/HarryTruman.[[/note]] The Progressive Party was the culmination of the progressive movement, which called for broad-reaching social reforms for America's working classes, including a pension system, income taxes, women's suffrage, farm relief, the right of labor to organize, and expanded access to health care. Despite its short life, the Progressive Party is notable for being the only third party to beat one of the major parties in a presidential election.
* The '''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Party_of_America Socialist Party of America]]''' existed from 1901 until 1972, and enjoyed its greatest success in the early 20th century, proving that, no, socialism was ''not'' always a four-letter word in the US. In the elections of 1912 and 1920, the Socialists won over 900,000 votes with their candidate UsefulNotes/EugeneDebs (keeping in mind that, in the latter case, he was ''in prison'' for protesting America's involvement in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI). They had particular success in local government, electing several mayors; UsefulNotes/{{Milwaukee}} in particular elected three Socialist mayors over the course of fifty years, the last one only leaving office in 1960. They endorsed Robert La Follette in 1924 and continued to build support in the 1920s, but their support was undercut by [[UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt FDR's]] New Deal during TheGreatDepression. After [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII the war]], [[RedScare anti-Communist fears]] caused the Socialist Party to fade away, and today, three groups claim the heritage of Debs' party: The Democratic Socialists of America and the Social Democrats USA agreed to focus on supporting the left wing of the Democratic Party rather than running their own candidates, but disagreed on UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, while the Socialist Party USA continues to advance Socialist candidates outside of the two-party system.

Currently, there are only two federal officeholders elected on third-party tickets, both senators. The first and most famous is UsefulNotes/BernieSanders, a senator from Vermont who identifies himself as a socialist (he's really more a European-style social democrat stuck in the more right-wing U.S.), campaigns as an independent but for all intents and purposes caucuses ("hangs out") with the Democrats.[[note]]He is the longest-serving federal officeholder in American history who has served continuously as an independent, being Vermont's congressman from 1991 to 2007, then winning its 2006 Senate election and two more since.[[/note]] He officially registered as a Democrat in 2015 to run in their 2016 and 2020 presidential primary. The second is Angus King of Maine, who was twice elected governor of Maine as an independent and subsequently was elected to the Senate in a three-way race in 2012 where he defeated the Republican and Democratic candidates; he also caucuses with the Democrats. Some moderate officeholders like Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have run third-party campaigns after losing their primary elections, won their seats, and converted back to their original party. Some recent legislators like Michigan rep Justin Amash have defected from their parties and registered as independent (or, in his case, Libertarian) for the rest of their term, but this is typically [[ScrewThisImOutOfHere the last action of a disillusioned idealist]]; few have ever run for re-election after doing so.\\

Just to mention, the Republican Party's rules are roughly the same as far as this goes. The main differences are that they make far less use of caucuses and allocate delegates by winner-takes-all or by congressional district for many states, not proportionally to popular vote, and do not use the "superdelegate" system: all of these factored into Donald Trump being able to run his successful primary campaign. There was once a time when Democrats didn't use superdelegates either, but after George [=McGovern=]'s disastrous run in 1972 -- in which he picked Thomas Eagleton, who proved to have had psychiatric issues in the past (as well as later having been found to have made some controversial remarks about [=McGovern=] to the press), as his running mate -- and UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter's loss to UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan in 1980, they added this feature as a safeguard.\\

At several points in American history the vice president has been, in effect, the Highest Elected Patsy, and has "taken the fall" for the administration. Since UsefulNotes/WorldWarII (where UsefulNotes/HarryTruman didn't know about the Manhattan Project until he got promoted), the VP has gained more influence, but it varies between administrations -- Dick Cheney was seen as very powerful, Joe Biden less so.\\

* The '''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_(United_States) Republican Party]]''', or the GOP ('''G'''rand '''O'''ld '''P'''arty, despite being younger than the Democrats), is the far right party in American politics. United by fiscal conservatism, and many (but not all) of them are social conservatives. Strongest in rural areas and the South, and among evangelical Protestants and middle-class to affluent voters. Reports of its imminent demise have been tossed around for decades now and are (probably) greatly exaggerated; while Republicans have only won the popular vote for the presidency ''once'' in the last three decades and are currently (just barely) minorities in Congress, the federal system more than balances the scales in their favor, as they control the vast majority of state legislatures.

* UsefulNotes/AndrewJohnson, for violating the Tenure of Office Act. The impeachment did succeed though in politically weakening Johnson to the point where he could no longer seek reelection, relegating him to just filling out the remainder of the assassinated Abraham Lincoln's term.

** Trump would later be impeached a second time with more bipartisan support in January 2021 for inciting an attempted coup against Congress in his favor after months of contesting Biden's electoral victory, as well as for pressuring the Georgia Secretary of State to fabricate votes in his favor. Despite his acquittal, he holds the distinction of being the only president in US history to be impeached twice, as well as the first to have his trial occur after leaving office; Johnson, Clinton, and Trump's prior trials were held while they were still the incumbent.[[note]]Trump's second impeachment trial was held after he left because (A) his offenses occurred less than a month before the end of his term, and (B) because there was/is a very strong likelihood that he could run for the office again, which he himself hinted at during the 2021 CPAC convention.[[/note]]

* The first kind has become increasingly common since UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, particularly when the president is a highly-electable populistic type and ''most'' particularly when the president is basically new to Washington. This sort of VP is effectively chosen to be a Secretary without Portfolio, providing advice on anything and everything and/or bringing political muscle and Washington connections to the administration. Indeed, the only major-party vice-presidential candidates since 1948 (the first post-UsefulNotes/WorldWarII presidential election) who had neither served in Congress nor held high-level executive-branch positions have been three Republican governors: UsefulNotes/SarahPalin (of UsefulNotes/{{Alaska}}, 2008), Spiro Agnew (of Maryland, 1968), and Earl Warren (of UsefulNotes/{{California}}, 1948). Almost all the rest have been sitting members of Congress (usually senators); the exceptions are Sargent Shriver,[[note]]He held several appointed executive positions and was in private legal practice in D.C. when nominated by the Democrats in 1972; also brother-in-law of Democratic icon UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy.[[/note]] UsefulNotes/GeorgeHWBush,[[note]]He was a former congressman from Texas, ambassador to the UsefulNotes/UnitedNations, "ambassador" to the [[RedChina People's Republic of China]] (technically, he was "Chief of the Liaison Office", but this was during the transition period from full US recognition of [[UsefulNotes/{{Taiwan}} the ROC]] to full US recognition of the PRC under Nixon, Ford, and Carter), and [[UsefulNotes/{{CIA}} Director of Central Intelligence]], and was in private business and academia when nominated by the Republicans in 1980.[[/note]] and UsefulNotes/DickCheney.[[note]]He had been the congressman from Wyoming and House Minority Whip, White House Chief of Staff under Ford, and Secretary of Defense under Papa Bush, and was running Halliburton when nominated by the Republicans in 2000.[[/note]]

** Also, this was the reasoning behind the choices of the first two women who were picked as major-party vice-presidential candidates: Geraldine Ferraro and UsefulNotes/SarahPalin. Ferraro was added to Democrat Walter Mondale's ticket in 1984 mainly to build support in the future; it was thought that Mondale's campaign against popular incumbent UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan was hopeless (and it ultimately was), so putting a woman on the ticket would help the Democrats curry favor with female voters in the future. Meanwhile, the 2008 Republican candidate, UsefulNotes/JohnMcCain, was under pressure on both the left and the right. From the right, he had a reputation for being such a moderate Republican, many conservatives declared that they'd vote for UsefulNotes/HillaryRodhamClinton or a third party over him. From the left, [=McCain=] had the misfortune of being a stuffy old white guy running against Barack "Hope and Change" Obama, a dynamic young black guy who himself had just emerged from a tough Democratic primary campaign against a rival who also wasn't an old white guy -- the aforementioned Hillary Clinton, who still had a lot of supporters in the party. It was thought that Palin, being both ultra-conservative and a woman, would solve both problems simultaneously.\\\
Both times it backfired. Ferraro and her husband's obtuse finances became a major issue in the campaign, and the revelation that she had a maid and a few million dollars tied up in real estate greatly undermined her "working-class immigrant's daughter" image. Palin, meanwhile, proved to be a gaffe machine and a publicity hound stealing the spotlight from [=McCain=], with a severe lack of depth in foreign policy; Creator/TinaFey's famous "I can see UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} from my house!" joke was based on Palin citing her home state of Alaska (where she was governor) being just over the Bering Strait from Russia as a foreign policy qualification. In both cases, they were ultimately seen by many voters as "token" candidates, having not been properly vetted by campaigns more interested in making a splash than in having strong running mates.
*** This also seems to have been at least part of the justification behind the ''third'' woman picked as a major-party vice-presidential candidate: UsefulNotes/KamalaHarris, who was selected as Joe Biden's running mate for the 2020 Presidential election. In this case, gender was only one of the aspects involved; Harris was also only the third person of color (after Obama and Charles Curtis) to run on a major presidential ticket and the first woman of color to do so, was much younger than the 77-year-old Biden, and had disagreed politically with Biden on key questions in the past. Unlike the previous examples, Harris ''was'' a strong running mate, as she was fairly popular in her own right and was clearly competent. Perhaps not coincidentally, this ticket succeeded where the previous two had failed.

* The '''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_(United_States) Republican Party]]''', or the GOP ('''G'''rand '''O'''ld '''P'''arty, despite being younger than the Democrats), is the far right party in American politics. United by fiscal conservatism, and many (but not all) of them are social conservatives. Strongest in rural areas and the South, and among evangelical Protestants and middle-class to affluent voters. Reports of its imminent demise have been tossed around for decades now and are (probably) greatly exaggerated; while Republicans have only won the popular vote for the presidency ''once'' in the last three decades and are currently slim minorities in Congress, the federal system more than balances the scales in their favor, as they control the vast majority of state legislatures.

These definitions apply to the current time; the ideologies of both parties have been extremely fluid and really only coalesced into firmly partisan lines in the latter half of the twentieth century. The original iterations of the party are almost completely unrecognizable from today's versions. The Democrats started out in 1828 as followers of UsefulNotes/AndrewJackson and generally aligned themselves as supporters of states' rights, a smaller federal government with a strong executive, and slavery because those aligned with his agenda; these are essentially the exact ''opposite'' of modern Democrat principles, and you would be hard pressed to find a Democrat today who sees Jackson in a good light. The Republicans came along in 1854 as a coalition of various groups whose only real uniting factor was opposition to slavery, which means Republicans today are much less shy about claiming credit for their past.\\

From the Civil War until shortly before UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, both parties had left and right wings. The Republicans were established from the remains of the leftist Whig Party and were originally a coalition between industrial interests, left-wing moral reformers, and black Southerners who viewed the GOP as the "party of [[UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln Lincoln]]", while the Democrats used to be a coalition between Northern labor and white ethnic communities on one hand and white landowners and former slaveholders in the South on the other, the latter ''also'' [[StillFightingTheCivilWar viewing the GOP as the "party of Lincoln"]]. During the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Democrats were split into War Democrats and Peace Democrats ("Copperheads"), while the Radical Republicans were a faction that opposed Lincoln and the moderate Republicans, with the Radicals favoring strong punitive measures against the rebellious Southern states and pushing for immediate abolition of slavery as opposed to Lincoln and company's cautious approach.\\

UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt's "New Deal coalition" during TheGreatDepression helped to pull the progressives into the Democratic fold and also saw the party start making inroads into the African American community, culminating in the party putting civil rights as one of its platforms in TheSixties and passing several Civil Rights Acts. This led to Democrats losing much of their white Southern support -- and several legislators -- and Nixon and Reagan both campaigned with at least an eye to picking up disillusioned Southern voters, though the Democrats established a virtual lock on the African-American vote because ''they'' were disillusioned by the Republican "Southern Strategy". The ideology-based party layout described above largely crystallized by TheEighties, though just ''how'' progressive or conservative individual members of either party are can vary and still lead to some party infighting and aisle-crossing.\\

Both major parties tend to have their own core of rich and elite constituencies and support from industries that provide much of the financial backing for each, though each party also usually exaggerates the degree to which its opponent is the "party of [insert your {{Acceptable Target|s}} industry of choice here]." The Republicans tend to garner support from small- to medium-sized business owners, oil and gas corporations, manufacturing corporations, construction and contracting businesses, and most of the financial sector--groups that generally benefit from lower taxes and regulations. The Democrats, meanwhile, are supported by lawyers and law firms, entertainment and technology companies (i.e. Hollywood and Silicon Valley), [[UsefulNotes/AmericanEducationalSystem higher education]], K–12 public school teachers, labor unions, and a smaller share of the financial industry--groups that tend to benefit from greater government aid and oversight. These interests are by no means exclusive, however, and most major industries and corporations tend to spread their campaign contributions around, typically to incumbents, because they don't want to anger either side and they do want to curry favor with whoever might be in office at the time. The influence of campaign money in politics is a very controversial issue in the United States, especially after the 2010 ''Citizens United'' v. ''FEC'' Supreme Court decision.\\

Geography is ''very'' important for understanding party lines. The South tends to be more conservative than the Northeast and Pacific West, and the Rocky Mountain West and the Midwest somewhere in the middle; unlike the parties themselves, this has stayed consistent for decades, most likely since the nation's inception. Today, and especially before about 1964, a Maine Republican might be more liberal than a Mississippi Democrat. The historical shift of how the parties changed can be seen very vividly in this context: The Republicans under Lincoln (then based almost exclusively in the North) ended slavery through federal action. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was championed by a progressive Democrat administration and supported by both parties in most of the country, but met fierce resistance in the South where conservative Democrats held most offices. This led many of them to [[StartMyOwn start their own]] "States' Rights" party and eventually switch parties; today, conservative Republicans have the strongest hold in the South. In other words: the politicians' parties changed, but their politics generally did not. On a more local level, one of the quickest ways to determine how someone likely votes is whether they live in an urban or rural environment: cities attract and employ those who are most likely to align with liberal causes while rural communities tend to align more with conservatives. Once again, these are all generalizations, but they are useful for explaining a) why physical electoral maps often appear overwhelmingly red even when Democrats win majorities, b) why Republicans do so much better in state and local elections, and c) why suburbs are so hotly contested as electoral battlegrounds.\\

America uses a first-past-the-post voting system -- in any election, one vote is cast and the candidate/option with the most votes is the winner, even if a majority did not vote for it. Quick example: In an election between A, B, and C, A gets 35%, B gets 45%, and C gets 20%. B wins, even though 55% of the electorate voted against them. If it seems to you that the A and C supporters should have teamed up and pooled their votes rather than splitting them, congratulations -- you've just discovered why America has only two major political parties. Using political science, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law it can be shown]] that plurality elections tend to lead to two-party systems, which is exactly what happened in America. This has led to calls for the implementation of alternative voting systems, such as the single transferable vote or instant-runoff voting, to break the monopoly of the two major parties.[[note]]Ironically, the Electoral College actually ''does'' require a majority vote when they vote for the president, though the fact their votes are decided by plurality elections means this doesn't come up; even when Ross Perot won one-fifth of the popular vote in 1992 on a third party platform, he didn't win even a single state. The one time it ''did'' happen was in 1824, when four Democratic-Republicans all ran against each other, the subsequent vote went to the House, and the scenario presented above essentially happened; one candidate threw in with another, and the candidate who won the plurality lost out.[[/note]]\\

The only two presidents who have ever been truly challenged for being ineligible to date are Barack Obama and UsefulNotes/ChesterAArthur. Challengers to Obama claimed that he was actually born in UsefulNotes/{{Kenya}} and that his Hawaiian birth certificate and newspaper birth announcements were forgeries, no doubt by the same people who orchestrated the Area 51 coverup.[[note]]Even if it were true, he would still be a natural-born U.S. citizen because his mother was one, and while he was born after that law took effect, under the statutes of the time he was born he only needed to live in the U.S. for a few years to be considered a natural-born U.S. citizen, which his academic record more than verifies.[[/note]] President Obama originally chose to ignore the allegations, likely perceiving them of beneath his attention, but eventually got so annoyed that he released his long-form birth certificate, then splashed it on a mug with the slogan "Made in the USA" and killed UsefulNotes/OsamaBinLaden about two days later, which effectively shut up all but the noisiest of the "birther theorists." Arthur was accused by Arthur Hinman of being born in UsefulNotes/{{Ireland}}. No one took up that story, so Hinman [[MovingTheGoalposts then accused Chester of having been born in]] UsefulNotes/{{Canada}}. Nobody could decide which was worse, so they elected Chester vice president.\\

The 25th Amendment also allows a president to relinquish the office ''temporarily'' due to incapacitation. So far this has only been used when the president has to undergo some medical procedure that requires anesthesia, so that if something truly terrible happens while the president is knocked out, there will be an acting president who can take action immediately without provoking a constitutional conflict. It's never happened and may never, but why take the risk? The 25th Amendment further allows the VP and a majority of the Cabinet to declare a president unfit for duty and remove him, even against his will, causing the VP to become acting president immediately. This is a safety valve of obvious last resort and has never been invoked in reality, though there were some very noisy voices suggesting that controversial President UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump should be ousted using it. ''Film/AirForceOne'' and ''Series/TwentyFour'' have both used it for its dramatic possibilities, though.\\

The Constitution itself lets Congress decide what happens if both President and Vice President of the United States are gone. Currently, this falls under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947. It goes from President, to Vice President, to Speaker of the House, to President ''pro tempore'' of the Senate, to the Cabinet members in order of the Cabinet post's longevity. Since the US hasn't gone past 'vice president' yet on the list, the fact that it ends at the Cabinet hasn't been tested. A person in the line of succession must satisfy the constitutional eligibility requirement -- a foreign-born cabinet officer (e.g., Bush 43's Taiwan-born Labor Secretary Elaine Chao)[[note]]German-born Henry Kissinger, who as Nixon's Secretary of State would have gotten as close as ''third'' in line if not for the natural-born citizen requirement, is an even better example.[[/note]] would be passed over.\\

* UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt (elected for the third time in 1940) also died of a stroke in 1945, twelve weeks after being inaugurated for his fourth term.

There have been numerous attempts throughout the years to reform the system but none has succeeded. The closest anyone ever got was early in the Nixon administration in 1969, when he and Congress attempted to implement a system that would eliminate the EC and use a run-off between the top two vote-getters if no one got over 50% in the first round. It sailed through the House on a huge margin but couldn’t get over the hump in the Senate or state legislatures because of Dixiecrat opposition. It came up a dozen votes short in the Senate, was filibustered, and then died when the congressional term ended.\\

The average American (excluding the editors of the [[http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=GOVMAN U.S. Government Manual]] & [[http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=CDIR the Congressional Directory]], and maybe Creator/TomClancy) [[SmallReferencePools has heard of maybe two or three of these guys]], maybe four if they keep up enough with current events or teach political science, usually taken from the ''big four'' quartet: the Secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, and the Attorney General, positions that date back to the literal Washington administration. The Cabinet typically also includes the Vice President, the President’s Chief of Staff, and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Unlike in many other countries, the cabinet meetings are not the avenue where major policy decisions are made in foreign and military affairs: that takes place in the National Security Council where only the relevant officials participate, such as the President, Vice President, and Secretaries of State and Defense (the Secretary of Education, for instance, doesn’t need to know of diplomatic talks with a crazy playboy dictator, weapons sales to UsefulNotes/{{Israel|isWithInfraredMissiles}}, or the invasion plans of the next Middle Eastern oil state waiting in line).\\

The ''Department of Defense'' ([=DoD=]), in the vernacular known as UsefulNotes/ThePentagon (named after the geometrical shape of its headquarters building), is so freaking large in comparison with the other departments that almost 80 percent of the federal workforce gets their paycheck from it, and that the Department of Defense is considered the single largest employer in the U.S. (right ahead of UsefulNotes/{{Walmart}} and UsefulNotes/McDonalds). The Office of the Secretary of Defense is the mainly civilian staff of the Secretary of Defense, and apart from the Honorable Mr. or Madam Secretary (who incidentally must be a civilian to maintain the alibi of civilian control), there is one Deputy Secretary of Defense, five Under Secretaries of Defense, 14 Assistant Secretaries of Defense (all appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate); and a myriad of senior civil servants with titles like Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for whatever..., and Deputy Assistant Under Secretary of Defense for whichever...\\

Interestingly, unlike in parliamentary systems, the Speaker does not legally need to be a sitting representative or ever have been a representative at all, they just need to be any person that 50% + 1 of the House's members want to be speaker. In practice, though, no Congress has ever taken advantage of this potentially fun {{loophole|Abuse}}, and instead the Speaker is always some sort of party leader.[[note]]After Speaker John Boehner's resignation in 2015, using this loophole was floated about; ultimately, though, Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan got the job.[[/note]] The Speaker is chosen at the beginning of each new Congress by a simple majority vote -- this vote is largely a formality, but don't tell the representatives that: they can incur ''huge'' penalties like losing chairmanship positions for not voting for their party's pick.\\

* UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump, for soliciting aid from Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 presidential election and for obstructing justice by resisting investigation attempts into the matter. Trump would continue to seek reelection anyways, but the impeachment trial still played a role in his loss to UsefulNotes/JoeBiden that year.
** Trump would later be impeached a second time with more bipartisan support in January 2021 for inciting an attempted coup against Congress in his favor after months of contesting Biden's electoral victory, as well as for pressuring the Georgia Secretary of State to fabricate votes in his favor. Despite his acquittal, he holds the distinction of being the only president in US history to be impeached twice, as well as the first to have his trial occur after leaving office; Johnson, Clinton, and Trump's prior trials were held while they were still the incumbent.[[note]]Trump's impeachment trial was held after he left because a) his offenses occurred less than a month before the end of his term, and b) because there was/is a very strong likelihood that he could run for the office again, which he himself hinted at during the 2021 CPAC convention.[[/note]]

Because no impeachment trial has ever successfully resulted in the conviction of a US president, the act is becoming seen as more of a symbolic gesture than anything else; because of how the electoral college functions, no sitting president has had a supermajority of the ''opposing'' party in the Senate since [[UsefulNotes/JohnWilkesBooth the special case]] of Andrew Johnson, and even ''he'' wasn't convicted. If you want an image of how unlikely a conviction would be, imagine if ''you'' got put on trial for a crime and half of the jury was made of your best friends [[{{Metaphorgotten}} who also depend on you for re-election endorsements]]. UsefulNotes/RichardNixon did resign while a strongly Democrat Congress was moving impeachment proceedings against him for his role in the Watergate scandal, and it's widely agreed upon that enough Republicans would have crossed the aisle to impeach and convict him had he stayed. Tellingly, Watergate weakened Nixon enough to render him a ''persona non grata'' in American politics following his departure.\\

The vice president officially chairs the Senate, but in practice they seldom do except on particularly auspicious occasions, and may not speak or vote except in case of an exact tie (the case for the first few months of 2001, when the Senate was divided 50 to 50 between Democrats and Republicans, with Dick Cheney as the tie-breaking vote). Instead, the Senate is officially chaired by the ''president pro tempore'' (pronounced "pro tem"), the senior-most senator of the majority caucus, though ''that'' senator typically defers that job to a junior senator as well, because the pres. pro tem tends to be at least an octogenarian with little stamina to run the assembly. The person chairing the Senate is always referred to as "Mr./Madam President" during sessions, regardless of actual rank. Informally, the reins of power in the Senate are wielded by the "Majority Leader" -- i.e., the senator who chairs the majority party's caucus -- typically a senior senator, though not quite as senior as the pro tem.\\

Senate seniority, by the way, is a funny thing. There are two types: seniority in the general body, and seniority in terms of a state. Seniority is decided by length of tenure in the Senate, so a senator can be quite senior and still be the "junior senator" of a particular state. And yes, the senior senator of one state can be junior to the junior senator of another state. The most senior "junior senator" is Maria Cantwell of Washington, who took office in 2001; the most junior "senior senator" is Jon Ossoff of Georgia, who took office in 2021 on the same day as his state’s junior senator Raphael Warnock. Seniority among an incoming class -- i.e. a group of newly elected senators sworn in on the same day -- is determined by former service in order as senator, vice president, House member, cabinet secretary, governor, by state population as of the most recent census, and finally by the length of the term they were first elected to. So, if two senators from the same state were sworn in on the same day, neither with any prior governmental service, the senator elected to a full 6 year term would be senior to the senator elected to finish a predecessor's term. Whew!\\

The bill, having been drawn up in some subsidiary committee or other (and usually after tons of debate over its initial contents), is presented at-large to the congressional house from which it originated for a vote. If it passes the vote, it goes to the other house, which goes through the same process of debating and rewording the bill before voting on its own version of it. Next, if it passes this second vote, the two different versions of the bill are brought to the "Conference Committee" -- members of both houses who come together to have another round of debates and rewording to craft a single, compromised version of the bill. Once the Conference Committee has finalized the content and wording of the bill, the bill ''again'' goes back before each house for a secondary round of debate before its final votes. So, before the president can even say yes or no to a bill officially, it has been drafted, debated, rewritten, added to, subtracted from, voted, folded, spindled, mutilated, re-debated, re-voted, and possibly used as a tea cozy.\\

Congress can also propose amendments to the Constitution, which must receive two-thirds majority in both houses and must then be approved by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states. There is no limitation on the scope of what an amendment may do, except that no state's Senate representation may be reduced without its consent.[[note]]In theory this is a meaningless limitation, as any amendment reducing a state's representation could also include a clause retracting the requirement for consent, though this has never actually been attempted or tested.[[/note]] Unless explicitly stated in the text of the bill proposing it, there is no time limit on ratification; the proposal that eventually became the 27th Amendment, for example, was first proposed shortly after the Constitutional Convention in 1789, and was fully ratified and enshrined in the Constitution in 1992, '''203 years later'''. The states also have the power to bypass Congress, and by the request of two-thirds of the state governments may call a Constitutional convention for proposing amendments, which upon approval by the convention must then be ratified in the normal fashion. To date, this has never occurred.\\

The Supreme Court (often called SCOTUS, from its full title of Supreme Court of the United States) consists of a number of judges called "justices", who are appointed by the president, subject to Senate confirmation, and who serve "during good behavior", which, barring conviction or impeachment, means a lifetime tenure. The number of Supreme Court justices is not set by the Constitution, but a tradition has developed in the last 60 some-odd years that nine is a good number. The President appoints the Supreme Court justices, albeit with the advice and consent of the Senate. Interestingly, Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to add judges to the Supreme Court, presuming they would be inclined to rule his way, and was talked out of it.[[note]]He wound up doing it by default anyway; since he was elected to four terms, by the time he died, he had appointed seven of the nine sitting justices ... though some of his appointees proved at least as likely to rule against his wishes.[[/note]] The court stuck at nine members then and has stayed there ever since.\\

Please note, however, that this was something [[DevelopersForesight most of the Founders could see coming]], on account of America's legal tradition, UsefulNotes/TheCommonLaw inherited from England. Interpretation of statutes has always been within the purview of common-law courts, and on the logic that the Constitution is a super-statute which justifies and overrides every other statute (i.e., law), the Court took it upon itself to interpret it as well (the decision in ''Marbury'' v. ''Madison'' makes this point). ''Stare decisis'' (the rule that once a judicial decision is made, it stands forever) is part and parcel of the common-law system, as anyone who knows anything about English (or Canadian or UsefulNotes/{{Australia}}n or...) law can tell you. However, two features make the American version of ''stare decisis'' interesting:

!!!Additionally ...

* The '''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic-Republican_Party Democratic-Republican Party]]''' existed from 1792 to 1834, though it was [[{{Retronym}} never called that at the time]], instead being a term used to distinguish the loose coalition of Jefferson acolytes (who typically referred to themselves as "Republicans" and eventually became the "Democratic" party) from the two modern parties of the same names. The Democratic-Republicans dominated federal politics, holding the presidency for 28 years (the longest stretch of any party) as well as most of Congress. However, the party generally lacked an identity beyond opposing the Federalists' calls for a centralized government and soon fell into factions after their opponents faded from relevance. The contentious election of 1824 saw the party fall to pieces, and once Jackson firmly defined his own Democratic party and won the next election, what was left soon formed...

* The '''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat States' Rights Democratic Party]]''', or simply the '''Dixiecrats''', were a faction that broke off from the Democratic Party in 1948 in protest of the Democrats' support for UsefulNotes/{{civil rights|Movement}}. The Dixiecrats, running on a segregationist platform, nominated then-South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond and managed to win over 1.1 million votes, 39 electoral votes, and four Southern states. The Dixiecrats faded away as a party after 1948, but the split between Northern and Southern Democrats continued to linger, leading to...

As these referenda are often written by non-politicians, or people with little formal legal training, they may ultimately prove to be of dubious constitutionality when enacted into law, and parts or all of them are often struck down by the courts after their passage. For example, California's Proposition 187, a 1994 initiative that sought to deny certain benefits and legal protections to illegal immigrants, was eventually struck down by the courts, and Proposition 8, which reversed the state Supreme Court's legalization of gay marriage, was struck down by the US Supreme Court.

The 25th Amendment also allows a president to relinquish the office ''temporarily'' due to incapacitation. So far this has only been used when the president has to undergo some medical procedure that requires anesthesia, so that if something truly terrible happens while the president is knocked out, there will be an acting president who can take action immediately without provoking a constitutional conflict. It's never happened and may never, but why take the risk? The 25th Amendment further allows the VP and a majority of the Cabinet to declare a president unfit for duty and remove him, even against his will, causing the VP to become acting president immediately. This is a safety valve of obvious last resort and has never been invoked in reality. ''Film/AirForceOne'' and ''Series/TwentyFour'' have both used it for its dramatic possibilities, though.\\

Because the number of electors is roughly equivalent to population density, theoretically all it takes to be elected President is to win the 11 states that have the most delegates: UsefulNotes/{{California}}, [[EverythingIsBigInTexas Texas]], UsefulNotes/{{New York|State}}, UsefulNotes/{{Florida}}, Illinois, UsefulNotes/{{Pennsylvania}}, UsefulNotes/{{Ohio}}, UsefulNotes/{{Michigan}}, UsefulNotes/{{Georgia|USA}}, UsefulNotes/NorthCarolina, and UsefulNotes/NewJersey. A presidential candidate carrying said 11 states will win the election even if their opponent wins every delegate from all the other 39 states ''and'' the District of Columbia. In practice, though, this rarely happens (outside of occasional years like 1936, 1972, or 1984) because many states across the spectrum of population count are considered 'safe' for one of the two biggest parties -- for example, since the 1990s, the Democratic presidential candidates have won California by comfortable margins, while the Republicans have done the same with Texas (although it’s getting less Republican with every passing year).\\

Geography is ''very'' important for understanding party lines. The South tends to be more conservative than the Northeast and Pacific West, and the Rocky Mountain West and the Midwest somewhere in the middle; unlike the parties themselves, this has stayed consistent for decades, most likely since the nation's inception. Today, and especially before about 1964, a Maine Republican might be more liberal than a Mississippi Democrat. The historical shift of how the parties changed can be seen very vividly in this context: The Republicans under Lincoln (then based almost exclusively in the North) ended slavery through federal action. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was championed by a progressive Democrat administration and supported by both parties in most of the country, but met fierce resistance in the South where conservative Democrats held most offices, leading many of them to [[StartMyOwn start their own]] "States' Rights" party and eventually switch parties. Today, conservative Republicans have the strongest hold in the South. In other words: the politicians' parties changed, but their politics generally did not. On a more local level, one of the quickest ways to determine how someone likely votes is whether they live in an urban or rural environment: cities attract and employ those who are most likely to align with liberal causes while rural communities tend to align more with conservatives. Once again, these are all generalizations, but they are useful for explaining a) why electoral maps are always overwhelmingly red even when Democrats win majorities, b) why Republicans do so much better in state and local elections, and c) why suburbs are so hotly contested as electoral battlegrounds.\\

* The '''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing Know Nothings]]''' were a political party that existed under the names '''Native American Party''' (nothing to do with actual Native Americans) from 1845 to 1855, and the '''American Party''' from then until 1860. The Know Nothings were a nativist movement that was strongly opposed to immigration (particularly from Ireland and UsefulNotes/{{Germany}}), which they blamed for crime in the cities, and Catholicism, which they felt was a foreign plot to subvert and overthrow American democracy. Consequently, they were also major contributors to UsefulNotes/TheIrishDiaspora, especially the enactment of anti-Irish legislation in America at a time when the Irish were considered nonwhite. The name "Know Nothing" comes from the secret groups that preceded the party, whose members were told to say "I know nothing" if they were confronted about their involvement. They enjoyed massive success in the mid-1850s thanks to the collapse of the Whig Party and the two-party system, winning state and congressional elections across the country, but they soon splintered and fell apart over the issue of slavery. In 1856, the Know Nothings nominated former president UsefulNotes/MillardFillmore as their presidential candidate, but Fillmore only won Maryland and the party's national influence quickly waned. The term "Know Nothing" would go on to be used as a derogatory term for a nativist for decades to come.

* The '''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic-Republican_Party Democratic-Republican Party]]''' existed from 1792 to 1834, though it was [[{{Retronym}} never called that at the time]], instead being a term used to distinguish the loose coalition of Jefferson acolytes who typically referred to themselves as "Republicans" and eventually became the "Democratic" party from the two modern parties of the same names. The Democratic-Republicans dominated federal politics, holding the presidency for 28 years (the longest stretch of any party) as well as most of Congress. However, the party generally lacked an identity beyond opposing the Federalists' calls for a centralized government, and soon fell into factions after their opponents faded from relevance. The contentious election of 1824 saw the party fall to pieces, and once Jackson firmly defined his own Democratic party and won the next election, what was left soon formed...
* The '''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_Party_%28United_States%29 Whig Party]]''' were the primary opposition party to Andrew Jackson's Democratic Party from the early 1830s to the late 1850s. To oversimplify vastly: on the question of which federal actor should have greater power, the President or the Congress, the Democrats favored the former while the Whigs favored the latter. Managed to win the presidency twice, both times by men who would later die in office: UsefulNotes/WilliamHenryHarrison in 1840 (succeeded by Vice President UsefulNotes/JohnTyler), and then UsefulNotes/ZacharyTaylor in 1848 (succeeded by Vice President UsefulNotes/MillardFillmore). As slavery became a bigger issue in the late 1850s, the Whig Party essentially self-destructed due to internal disagreement on the subject. Most Whigs in the North (such as UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln, ex-Whig congressman from Illinois, 1847–1849) joined the then-fledgling Republican Party, and those in the South gravitated either to the American Party (see below) or the Constitutional Union Party.

** Trump would later be impeached a second time with more bipartisan support in January 2021 for inciting an attempted coup against Congress in his favor after months of contesting Biden's electoral victory, as well as for pressuring the Georgia Secretary of State to fabricate votes in his favor. Despite his acquittal, he holds the distinction of being the only president in US history to be impeached twice, as well as the first to have his trial occur after leaving office; Johnson, Clinton, and Trump's prior trials were held while they were still the incumbent.[[note]]Trump's impeachment trial was held after he left because a) his offenses occurred less than a month before the end of his term, and b) because there was/is a very strong likelihood that he could run for the office again.[[/note]]

Geography is ''very'' important for understanding party lines. The South tends to be more conservative than the North and West, and the Rocky Mountain states and the Midwest somewhere in the middle; unlike the parties themselves, this has stayed consistent for decades, most likely since the nation's inception. Today, and especially before about 1964, a Maine Republican might be more liberal than a Mississippi Democrat. The historical shift of how the parties changed can be seen very vividly in this context: The Republicans under Lincoln (then based almost exclusively in the North) ended slavery through federal action. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was championed by a progressive Democrat administration and supported by both parties in most of the country, but met fierce resistance in the South where conservative Democrats held most offices, leading many of them to [[StartMyOwn start their own]] "States' Rights" party and eventually switch parties. Today, conservative Republicans have the strongest hold in the South. In other words: the politicians' parties changed, but their politics generally did not. On a more local level, one of the quickest ways to determine how someone likely votes is whether they live in an urban or rural environment: cities attract and employ those who are most likely to align with liberal causes while rural communities tend to align more with conservatives. Once again, these are all generalizations, but they are useful for explaining a) why electoral maps are always overwhelmingly red even when Democrats win majorities, b) why Republicans do so much better in state and local elections, and c) why suburbs are so hotly contested as electoral battlegrounds.\\

The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution with the intent of creating a state free from the influence of Factions (political parties). In this they failed, as parties began forming while the ink was still wet on the parchment, arguing over whether the federal government or individual states should have the greater power. Though parties have less ''official'' influence than they do in most countries, they still hold an immense amount of sway in the government, largely due to the funding they can collect for candidates who agree with their policies.\\

UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt's "New Deal coalition" during TheGreatDepression helped to pull the progressives into the Democratic fold and also saw the party start making inroads into the African American community. However, in time this cost the Democrats their white Southern support -- and several legislators -- due to the Civil Rights Acts in TheSixties, and Nixon and Reagan both campaigned with at least an eye to picking up disillusioned Southern voters. Conversely, the Democrats established a virtual lock on the African-American vote because ''they'' were disillusioned by the Republican "Southern Strategy". The party layout described above finally crystallized in TheEighties. More recently, the Democrats have made gains in the suburbs as the Republican Party became increasingly dominated by evangelicals, helping them to crack back into and even flip "Sunbelt" southern states, while the GOP are cracking into the Rust Belt in the North thanks to the populist culture-warrior appeal of President Donald Trump.\\

Both major parties tend to have their own core of rich and elite constituencies and support from industries that provide much of the financial backing for each, though each party also usually exaggerates the degree to which its opponent is the "party of [insert your {{Acceptable Target|s}} industry of choice here]." The Republicans tend to garner support from small- to medium-sized business owners, oil and gas corporations, manufacturing corporations, construction and contracting businesses, and most of the financial sector--groups that generally benefit from lower taxes and regulations. The Democrats, meanwhile, are supported by lawyers and law firms, entertainment and technology companies (i.e. Hollywood and Silicon Valley), [[UsefulNotes/AmericanEducationalSystem higher education]], K–12 public school teachers, labor unions, and a smaller share of the financial industry--groups that benefit from greater government aid and oversight. These interests are by no means exclusive, however, and most major industries and corporations tend to spread their campaign contributions around, typically to incumbents, because they don't want to anger either side and they do want to curry favor with whoever might be in office at the time. The influence of campaign money in politics is a very controversial issue in the United States, especially after the 2010 ''Citizens United'' v. ''FEC'' Supreme Court decision.\\

Geography is ''very'' important for understanding party lines. The South tends to be more conservative than the North and West, and the Rocky Mountain states and the Midwest somewhere in the middle; unlike the parties themselves, this has stayed consistent for decades, most likely since the nation's inception. Today, and especially before about 1964, a Maine Republican might be more liberal than a Mississippi Democrat. The historical shift of how the parties changed can be seen very vividly in this context: The Republicans under Lincoln (then based almost exclusively in the North) ended slavery through federal action. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was championed by a Democrat administration and supported by both parties in most of the country, but met fierce resistance in the South where conservative Democrats held most offices, leading Southern Democrats to [[StartMyOwn start their own]] "States' Rights" party. Today, conservative Republicans have the strongest hold in the South. In other words: the politicians' parties changed, but their politics generally did not. On a more local level, one of the quickest ways to determine how someone likely votes is whether they live in an urban or rural environment: cities attract and employ those who are most likely to align with liberal causes while rural communities tend to align more with conservatives. Once again, these are all generalizations, but they are useful for explaining a) why electoral maps are always overwhelmingly red even when Democrats win majorities, b) why Republicans do so much better in state and local elections, and c) why suburbs are so hotly contested.\\

* The '''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement Tea Party]]''', despite its name, was not a political party ''per se'', but rather, is a right-wing populist movement centered in the Republican Party. It was primarily composed of conservative, Christian, nationalist, middle-class citizens, and it had its genesis in early 2009, when CNBC correspondent Rick Santelli went on [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-Jw-5Kx8k a rant]] on the floor of the UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} Mercantile Exchange attacking UsefulNotes/BarackObama's bailout of homeowners facing foreclosure. Some would argue it started with UsefulNotes/RonPaul's presidential campaign in 2007–08, but although he had a faction in the Tea Party, the majority were closer to mainline conservative Republican ideology than the anti-interventionist, staunch libertarian Paul. Their name is a reference to the UsefulNotes/{{Boston}} Tea Party, one of many protests by colonial Americans against the Tea Act passed by the British Parliament in 1773.\\\

* Andrew Johnson, for violating the Tenure of Office Act. The impeachment did succeed though in politically weakening Johnson to the point where he could no longer seek reelection, relegating him to just filling out the remainder of the assassinated Abraham Lincoln's term.

** Trump would later be impeached a second time with more bipartisan support in January 2021 for inciting an attempted coup against Congress in his favor after months of contesting Biden's electoral victory, as well as for pressuring the Georgia Secretary of State to fabricate electoral votes in his favor. Despite his acquittal, he holds the distinction of being the only president in US history to be impeached twice, as well as the first to have his trial occur after leaving office; Johnson, Clinton, and Trump's prior trials were held while they were still the incumbent.

Because no impeachment trial has ever successfully resulted in the conviction of a US president, the act is becoming seen as more of a symbolic gesture than anything else; because of how the electoral college functions, no sitting president has had a supermajority of the ''opposing'' party in the Senate since the special case of Andrew Johnson, and even ''he'' wasn't convicted. If you want an image of how unlikely a conviction would be, imagine if ''you'' got put on trial for a crime and half of the jury was made of your best friends [[{{Metaphorgotten}} who also depend on you for re-election endorsements]]. UsefulNotes/RichardNixon did resign while a strongly Democrat Congress was moving impeachment proceedings against him for his role in the Watergate scandal; it's widely agreed upon that enough Republicans would have crossed the aisle impeach and convicted him had he stayed. Tellingly, Watergate weakened Nixon enough to render him a ''persona non grata'' in American politics following his departure.\\