The United States has three branches of government: legislative, judicial, and executive. The executive branch is led by the president, who serves as head of state and commander-in-chief of the United States military.
The president is responsible for carrying out and enforcing laws passed by Congress (the legislative branch). He also appoints leaders of federal agencies, including the cabinet, which is the president’s main advisory body. The vice president is also part of the executive branch and must take over the presidency if the president can no longer serve.
Article II of the United States Constitution establishes the president as the head of the executive and the armed forces. It also states that the president “shall from time to time” present Congress with information on the state of America “and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”
Under Article II, Section 4, the Constitution warns that the president, vice president, “and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
George Washington served as the first president, and therefore the first head of the executive branch. In his farewell address, Washington warned that each branch of government must stay within its constitutional limits because allowing one branch to gain too much power could lead to tyranny.
“It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free Country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective Constitutional spheres; avoiding in the exercise of the Powers of one department to encroach upon another,” Washington said. “The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.”
