The Presidency

The presidency is the office the player holds in the main game and, later, in Career Mode. A term lasts four years and is played in monthly turns. Each month the player responds to a policy, and the focus group, the President's analyst, and the press all react to it. Around that monthly decision sits everything else a President manages: the cabinet, the courts, Congress, the country's wars, and its economic and diplomatic standing. These pages cover that ground.

The turn and the checks

• The turn describes what happens between choosing a policy and returning to the dashboard.
• Checks and balances describes how Congress, the Supreme Court and the cabinet can pass, modify or block a policy, and the order in which they consider it.
• The courts describes the Supreme Court, how justices rule, and how vacancies arise and are filled.
• Approval and polling describes the President's approval rating and what moves it each month.
• Congress and elections describes the midterm and re-election, the campaign season, and how Congress is decided.

The people

• Cabinet and Vice President describes the cabinet's seats, the people who fill them, how they carry out or water down a policy, and the Vice President.
• Institutions describes the Federal Reserve Chair, the FBI Director, the intelligence chief, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Surgeon General.

War

• The war room describes deployments, the different kinds of war, the peace conference, and the aftermath of conflict.

Constitutional moves

• Special actions describes the constitutional actions open to a President, including repealing amendments, granting statehood, ending the filibuster and dissolving Congress.

Endings

• Scandals and succession describes assassination, succession, resignation, impeachment and the other ways a presidency can end.

The numbers

• Diplomacy describes the President's relations with the rest of the world.
• Economy statistics describes the economic figures a policy can move.
• Social statistics describes the national statistics tracked in Social Engineering mode.

Related

The settings that shape a presidency are described on the Toggles pages, including Difficulty. The voters who judge each turn are described on the Personas pages, by era, and the organised interests are described on the Stakeholders pages. The presets a presidency can start from are listed on the Scenarios page.