History Abridged: POTUS - President of the United States

Historian article

By Paula Kitching, published 4th December 2020

History Abridged: This feature seeks to take a person, event or period and abridge, or focus on, an important event or detail that can get lost in the big picture. Think Horrible Histories for grownups (without the songs and music). See all History Abridged articles

Described as the most powerfully elected office in the world, the President of the United States (POTUS) has been in a bit of turmoil recently and yet it was created to be one of the key checks and balancers of a new Federal system of government. The United States was formed in 1776 during the Revolutionary War that separated the American colonies from the British Crown. To govern the new states, representatives of each met to create a Constitution in 1787. When it was enacted in 1789, it was one of the first purposely written blue prints for government structures and procedures. The main body of that constitution remains today with only 27 amendments passed in the intervening years – feeding into the belief that the US political system is rarely wrong...

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