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If I Were President
By Catherine Stier, DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan Albert Whiteman & Company
Copyright © 1999 Catherine Stier
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4532-7625-9
CHAPTER 1
TWO UNITED STATES PRESIDENTS, George Washington, the first president, and Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth, are honored each February on Presidents' Day. But who is the president of the United States, and what does the president do?
The president is leader of the country. Unlike kings and queens, presidents aren't born into the job. The people of the United States choose a president every four years. They vote for the person they want to run their country.
But the president does not run the country alone. According to an important plan called the Constitution, written more than two hundred years ago, a group of people called the Congress make the laws. Other people, called judges, explain the laws.
Some of the president's work is probably fun, such as handing out medals or flying to a meeting in a private jet. But most of the time the president works hard and must think about serious things, like how to spend the country's money and how to get along with other nations. The president helps make new laws and leads America's fighting forces. He (or maybe, someday, she) is also the leader of his political party—usually the Democrats or Republicans.
The Constitution says a person must be born a citizen of the United States and have lived there for at least fourteen years to be president. A person must also be thirty-five years old to hold the highest office in the land. That's it! Perhaps someday you may choose—and be chosen—to take on this very important job.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from If I Were President by Catherine Stier, DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan. Copyright © 1999 Catherine Stier. Excerpted by permission of Albert Whiteman & Company.
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