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Ryan Strausbaugh
Mr. Hawkins
Government, Period 5
October 29, 2015
Executive Branch Exam
The Presidency
1. The formal qualifications of the presidency are a bit odd, but make sense. This is
probably because they were made by a bunch of rebels wanting to show their family that they
could be independent and live on their own. The age requirement was most likely put in so that
an uneducated child couldnt run for President. Although thats a bit odd, who would want to
vote for an uneducated child anyway? Why would there have to be a rule making it so that
wouldnt be an issue? So many questions and no answers, oh time travel, how helpful you would
be, in figuring out the answer of this query. Despite the fact that the complexity of the office of
President is getting more and more complicated we shouldnt make the age requirement be any
higher, the people in office are already getting grey hair; they shouldnt start in the office with
grey hair, thatd be crazy, mostly since some old people are in fact crazy. To be completely
honest, not allowing a naturalized citizen run for office doesnt make any sense, mostly because
this was a rule made by a group of people who were naturalized citizens of a country that they
essentially stole from another group of people. Although a reason as to why they insisted on the
rule was so that the British wouldnt be able to run for President and try to pass anything that
would get America tied back together with Britain, which would be an amazing plan in all

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honesty, but of course such a plan would never see the light of day as a result of this rule. As for
why the voters themselves dont decide the qualifications, this was because the people writing
the rules probably felt as though the voters themselves wouldnt really know what would be best
for the countrys voting process, and now here we are today, where the votes of the people may
not even really matter as a result of the Electoral College. Although the Electoral College was
helpful back in the days before internet, it doesnt really do much for us nowadays when we
could easily vote from our computers.
2. The job of being the president is not too big of a job for one person to handle. This is
shown by our Presidents who fight for the good of the people, for example, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt who had communicated with the people of the United States during the great
depression which was a really tough time the people, and he reached out to them and did
everything in his power to respond to the letters written to him by giving the people the things
that they had asked for in their letters which was really an incredible act and still is to this day,
after all he has been the only President who has done such a thing for his people. Another
example is Abraham Lincoln, who used his wide span of power to eventually get the 13th
amendment passed. If it werent for large amount of power given to the President he wouldnt
have been able to do that, he especially wouldnt have been able to do that if there were to be a
dual executive, because in that time the second president would most likely be someone who
would oppose the idea of the 13th amendment and fought against Lincoln in his efforts,
essentially making the passing of the amendment impossible. The reason that analogy was
brought up is to explain why it wouldnt work today. If the two Presidents had conflicting ideas
they wouldnt be able to get anything done, making their term completely useless since they
wouldnt get any work done. Another reason that the dual executive idea wouldnt work is

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because there is no even way to split the powers of the President amongst two people, yes there
are eight powers, no that doesnt mean to give one President four and the other President the
other four. There is no way to balance out the powers of the two and keep balance in the dual
presidency. This also means that if the powers were to be divvied up between the two they
wouldnt be able to keep checks on each others powers because one would have the power to do
so and the other would not. The only way to have a dual executive work would be to have both
of the Presidents have the same powers, which would make having two Presidents completely
pointless.
The Presidential Election Process
2. The Electoral College is no longer a necessity for voting for the President. This is
because it tries to even out the votes of the states even though they were already balanced
properly. The states really should have their votes be made based on population and thats it, no
stealing votes from other states for quote un-quote equality in the voting process. Its absurd to
think that the land based purely about democracy would make a system so that the possible
Presidents wouldnt have to pay attention to about eighty percent of the population of the United
States to get into office. What kind of democratic voting system is that? Oh yeah, a bad one. The
winner-take-all allocation of state Electors and the two extra electors given to each state are both
ridiculous, but if there had to be one that was worse than the other it would be that the smaller
states are given the two extra electors. How, in any sense, is that fair? They have a smaller
population so they get fewer votes, easy as that; and the larger states have more votes because
they have a larger population. Its completely unfair to the larger state to essentially take away
part of their population and place it in a different state, its like the government forces people out
of their homes and into a different state so that they can vote in that state. The Electoral College

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makes it so that the people are represented as equal, but treated unequally, for a country to be
doing this in a democracy is ridiculous, in fact, since they already have people voting on behalf
of the people actually voting for the President, why not cut out the Electoral College and have
the Chief Citizen, the current President, vote for the next President. What would the difference
be? If anything he would be better qualified than the Electoral College because hes the
representative of every person in the United States. Oh and since he already has the power to
choose the next President we may as well take away the term limit cause hed surely not vote for
himself oh wait, thatd be a dictatorship. Essentially, in some farfetched way, we are in a
dictatorship at the moment. We have no real say in who gets elected, its really if the Electoral
College wants to listen to the people or not.
Growth of Presidential Powers
2. The media has definitely changed the presidency in many ways. It allows the President to
speak to all of the people across the Country while giving a speech in Washington D.C., and they
can campaign while they sleep with ads all over the internet and commercials everywhere on
television. It has changed the unofficial qualification for office by adding to them; essentially
making one of the unofficial qualifications be that if the President essentially needs to interact
with the people using the media. This makes it so that during campaign time there are street signs
covered with candidates, their plans for the country are all that is heard on televisions, and their
advertisements cover web pages from top to bottom; and all of this campaigning is so that the
candidate can be heard over the other candidates who are doing the exact same thing. After
seeing part of the Republican debates, many of the controversial candidates would most likely
still be elected for without the mass media, just not as quickly. This is because news of the how
the debate went would still get out without mass media, just at a much slower pace than it does

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now. The modern media doesnt really strengthen or weaken the validity of electing a President,
either way theyd get the streets only speaking their names, its just a matter of how they get their
names to the streets, theres really nothing special about how the candidates use mass media
aside from that they use it to get their name out faster than normal. For instance way back when
we had just beaten Britain and claimed our independence, there was bound to be town criers
announcing to the towns people nearby walking on the streets that candidate running for the
President of the United States used to support Britain in the war fought for freedom against
Britain, or how a different candidate stated that they wanted to tax the peoples goods, or even
claiming that one of the candidates was still in cahoots with the British, trying to get America to
once again be a part of Britains land. After all, communication to the people is still part of the
game, and its still the same game as it was back then, just with new technology to play the game
with, and the players simply had to adjust to the new technology to play with.
The Unitary Executive
1. The presidency in fifty years will hopefully remain roughly the same; however there is a large
possibility that the presidency will become even more powerful. This has been shown by the
presidency growing over the years, and as the country grew, so did the Presidents power.
Although at this point theres not much more that the President could have, after all he is the
representative of every person in the United States and he controls the United States military,
also hes the head of the government; so theres not really much else he can be, but Im sure that
in time the people will find something that he needs to be given power for and the President will
become an even stronger body while still somehow keeping the United States as a democracy, on
that note its really amazing that no President has used the military to take over the government,
because they could, very easily. Maybe thats how the presidency will strengthen within the next

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fifty years; someone becomes President to take over the country. Its definitely possible; Donald
Trump is a legitimate candidate after all. Maybe this is an over analysis of his power, after all the
people in the military can still think for themselves and fight against the man that wanted to be
dictator of the United States of America, but then again if the person was good enough with
words, if they said the right things to the right people, they take over the other judicial and
legislative branches of government, announce their dictatorship, and rule for a couple decades.
That would be an interesting turn of events, perhaps in an effort to gain more power theyd try to
take over Canada and Mexico so that theyd have more land to rule over and control. Perhaps
even a third World War if they got enough power, which would truly, be a horrendous end result
not just for the people of the United States, but for the world. But alas, that will hopefully not
happen ever, or at least itll happen when theres a sure fire way to deal with evil and cruel,
storybook dictators and there wont have to be another World war, which would definitely be a
good end result to have because the people of the world definitely dont want to go through
another one of those terrible events again.