The line of power to the President is the following: President, Vice President, Speaker of the House, President pro tempore of the Senate, then Secretary of State. Secretary of the State and President pro tempore of the Senate do appear on the list, but neither of them are number three on the list. The Speaker of the House is the third in line for the presidency, after the President and the Vice President.

The 22nd Amendment was adopted after the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt to limit the number of terms a president may serve. The other qualifications, such as 35 years old and natural born citizen were stipulated by the constitution. Religious qualification is strictly forbidden by the constitution.

This should have been a relatively simple question. The Presidency is the most constitutionally limited office in the US. In other words, the constitution imposes greater eligibility requirements on the office of the President than on any other office in the country. In more concrete terms, the President must have been born a US citizen (there is some debate over “natural born”—but that’s mostly beyond the scope of this course) which means that a nationalized immigrant cannot EVER be president. This stands in stark contrast to the House and Senate which simply impose various temporal restrictions on nationalization (e.g. must have been a citizen for 7 years). Beyond that, the President must be 35—the highest specified age in the Constitution, and he must have been a resident of the US for 14 years (i.e. he cannot have been born a US citizen, then gallivanted off to France for his entire life, return, and seek the office).

This is a difficult question, for multiple reasons. First and foremost, the difference between the Head of State and the Head of Government is always a little tricky. Second, the answers include two actual heads of state (the president and the Queen of England), but those answers are not the best answers as they are examples of a Head of State rather than the Head of State himself. Regardless, a Head of State is a quasi-ceremonial position which is oftentimes held by figureheads (such as the Queen of England) who, while they lack actual power, possess the ability—perhaps even duty—to be the first and foremost representative of their country to the world. 

This is a difficult question. Heads of State and Heads of Government are always difficult to keep separate. Additionally, the answers included an actual example of a Head of Government (i.e. the Prime Minister). Regardless, a Head of Government is a non-ceremonial, powerful position in which the holder of it is generally the chief executive and responsible for implementing laws along with supervising the bureaucracy (if there is one).

This is an interesting question. One would assume that a Head of State could not also be the Head of Government, but one would assume incorrectly! Since these are simply descriptive titles, and not actually people, it is possible to be both a head of state and a head of government at the same time. In other words, it is possible to not only represent your country as the face of the country and the receiver of foreign diplomats etc (head of state) but to also hold a position of power as the chief executive, etc (head of government). In the US, for example, the president is BOTH a head of state AND government. In the UK, however, the roles are split: the Queen is the head of state and the Prime Minister is the head of government. 

Agency loss is a problem inherent in any kind of delegation of power. Agency loss is the possibility that your agent—that is, the person to whom you have delegated power—will do something different than what you would have preferred. Any amount of variation is agency loss—not just substantial amounts. When Congress delegates power to the president, for example, Congress must worry about agency loss.

Created in 1947 by the National Security Act, the NSC advises the president on issues related to national security and coordinates information between the different branches of the military and the CIA.

Contrary to popular belief, the President is not, in fact, authorized to declare war. Under the Constitution, ONLY Congress has the power to declare war; the President is instructed to go before Congress and present their case for military involvement, with the final decision left up to both the House and Senate. However, the issue of war powers – and specifically the extent of the President’s permitted exercise of them – is perhaps one of the most contentious modern political controversies. In the last several decades, a new trend has begun to emerge, in which Presidents increasingly insert temporary deployments of troops and other forms of military assistance into foreign conflicts, all without obtaining prior Congressional approval. Informed of the nation’s military actions only once these commitments had been made, Congress has usually chosen to sanction the President’s decisions after the fact – notable examples include the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and several sectors of the ongoing War on Terror. Congress did attempt to take back some of its control with the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which would have held the President to much stricter rules on activating the army and making military commitments. But every President who has held office since the law’s passage has chosen to simply ignore it – a fact which Congress has yet to effectively challenge.

The rule governing Presidential term limits – a maximum of two four-year terms – was actually set in place with the passage of the Twenty-second Amendment. Ratified in 1951, the Twenty second Amendment owes its existence to the twelve-year Oval Office occupancy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the first (and only) president to put aside the two term precedent established by George Washington. The Twenty fifth Amendment also owes its existence to prior presidential action – ratified in 1967, it was inspired by the chaos left in the wake of President Woodrow Wilson’s debilitating stroke, in which his wife covertly assumed many of his duties while Congress dithered and bickered helplessly.