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Washington dies during the interagency between the electors meeting (in December?) and the inauguration (March). The cause is left ambiguous, but scandal scratches at the door and an air of ill intent clings to the halls of Mount Vernon. Between you and me, an old slave woman whose daughter, granddaughter, and godchild were property of Washington sold off to finance inauguration expenses may have played a larger part than history is want to give credit to such figures. She worked in the gardens and had some knowledge of herbs and fungi and had friends among the kitchen staff. The rich and famous have always had a parasitic hostility-dependency on those who tend to their bodies, wash their clothes, cook their supper, pour their wine. Washington died on the toilet of a tavern a day’s ride from his hall, tearing by his collapsing frame’s last strength his intestines, like some mournful Cato on the outer margins of power.

Adams assumes office to a general sense of shock and unease. With no Washington to weld the office of Presidency into its own site of power, Adams’ impotent gestures at aristocracy alienate the Jeffersonians and prompt a cold shoulder from his own Federalists. Power concentrates in Congress, with the President meeting backlash when he deviates from the (alleged) prepaird cabinet of Washington. John Jay consents to serve as Foreign Secretary leaving Jefferson’s hand free in the House, where he stands to inherit Washington’s mantle as Head of the Virginia delegation and the rest of the upper South. Adams has neither the military experience nor reputation to justify taking direct command of the troops when the Whisky Rebellion breaks out, but does so anyway. Though the outbreak is put down without real doubt as to the outcome, Adams manages to humiliate himself by falling off his horse during an expectation of the troops (later refigured in British papers as falling off his horse in the middle of battle and having to be rescued.)

By the first midterms the Constitution’s career is deeply in question. A bill is passed by the House and delayed in the Senate to give the House more powers to oversee the President and his cabinet, including the power to remove confidence in the later, held to be implicit in the House’s budgetary powers. The question of succession is also relevant here: the Foreign Secretary is in line to inherit the presidency after Adams, but after Jay resigns in protest and Adams attempts to appoint a crony of his own, there is contention—if the whole cabinet is declared incompetent, then can any of its officers still receive the presidency? Adams vetos several bills seeking to curtail his as of yet dubious powers and pretentions, several of which are overridden, further damaging his percieved influence.

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the presidency is abandoned as a political convergence point in favor of 3 different models of executive power—constitutional monarchy, popular with Adams and a few federalists and no one else, a consular model, drawn from Senators with an eye to north/south representation, and a prime minister/collective cabinet model. the deep south planter aristocrats later go in hard for the Imperial model, with the Emperor serving for life (or as long as he commands the support of the Confederate military) … the drawbacks of the imperial system as well as the convivences become especially inflected following the reconquering of the south and negotiating how to dismantle the Crescent Empire.

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Lincoln doesn’t die but is incapacitated for months following an attempt on his life by Wilkes Booth while leaving the theatre. His wraith like frame lingers on the edge of life and death, contracting infection and guarded around the clock under the paranoid oversight of Mary Todd, even his cabinet and vice presidents (former and current) unable to meet with him except individually and under her supervision, during his only half-lucid moments.

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Ulysses Salazar Ampersand, in his 16th term of office (some admittedly lasting only a few days, due to the parliamentary evolution of the Presidency) signs a treaty with the Aeons dissolving the United States and turning over administration to the alien invaders following the Dirty War which saw primarily humans batteling other humans to root out pro and anti alien forces. His management of much of the war from underground bunkers in the Sierea Nevadas and the Far Side of the Moon, culminating with the Treaty of Mars, marked the end of the 574 years of the American Presidency. The consular Senate Leadership, the Speaker of the House, the Sacred Tribunate, and the National Assembly Presidium’s Commisioners signitures were also secured, while the Vice President refused, prompting Ampersand to shoot him point blank to prevent an Anti-President from being proclaimed. Ampersand had to deal with just such an Anti-President not once but twice before, following a different vice president refusing to accept the resignation of their coalition and later being elected president all while maintaining a government in excile, and at times the de facto government, while a different Anti-President was proclaimed from within Ampersand’s own government following discovery that he had personally broken the Humanist Curfew around the planet to try to go negotiate a surrendor, with Ampersand being impeached while en route and his acting vice president and secretary of planetary systems was elevated to the presidency but, being on his deathbed as the result of contracting a spaceplague (hhence the necessity of Ampersand going to negotiate himself rather than sending his chief diplomat) the issue was handed over to the congress as a question of qualification by a majority of the cabinet, which turned against Ampersand’s attempt to negotiate/surrendor and instead invited the Speaker of the House to incorporate them as his own Emergency Government, something he did without consultation of the majority of the members of the 7 Houses of Congress on the basis of an emergency powers clause which Ampersand had been impeached for similarly misusing in relation to designating himself, three other commissioners, two secretarites and the Commander of the 2-ship fleet carrying them all to Mercury, Jupiter and then Neptune to attempt to negotiate with the aeons.

Ulysses Salazar Ampersand’s numeration as president is difficult to pin down without controversy for just such reasons, as anti-presidents became common in the Late American Republic, mid to late American space empire, and American Protectorate. though denounced by each other as antipresidents and therefore illigitimate constantly, most antipresidents of any significance would later have at least some significant portion of their tenure implicitly or explicitly recognized and legitimized, up to and including retroactively applying each other’s policies. around 1010 persons (over 87 percent men) held the office or the chief execuative of a regency council discharging said office, a number greatly inflated by short to middling periods during which the presidency might regularly change (mostly between the same set of 20 people or so) every couple of weeks, but changes over the course of a few hours occured during particularly fluid political crises.