Presidents, Power, And The Myths We Love with Sharon McMahon

Power isn’t magic, and the presidency isn’t a throne. We sit down with Sharon McMahon—former government teacher, civic educator, and New York Times bestselling author—to unpack the biggest myths about presidential power and replace guesswork with constitutional clarity. Together, we draw a clear line between executive orders and actual laws, explore why modern presidents feel pressure to “do something” when Congress stalls, and map where the Constitution draws hard boundaries that even the most determined administration cannot cross.

Sharon takes us past slogans like “what the founders intended” to the nuance the framers built in: amendment paths, short text meant for public reading, and a design they knew would need updates. We dig into how an administrative state and the internet outgrew eighteenth-century vocabulary, why courts lean on history, and how citizens can use annotated constitutions from Annenberg, the National Constitution Center, and Congress.gov to make sense of today’s fights over executive authority. If you’ve ever wondered whether a president can simply reverse a policy, change legal ages, or ignore statutes, this conversation gives you a practical test: look to the text, check past precedent, and ask what the law actually permits.

We also examine the 24-hour news cycle’s role in turning outfits and photo ops into narratives of power, and we re-center what lasting leadership really looks like. The president's history ranks highest in terms of sharing a few traits: fortitude, a commitment to the common good, and the ability to articulate a positive vision that invites people in. Sharon brings this to life through a historian’s lens, drawing on insights from the remarkable correspondence of John and Abigail Adams—a rare primary-source window into character, strain, and decision-making at the dawn of the American experiment.

If you’re ready to trade hero worship for civic literacy, this episode is your field guide. Listen, share with a friend who loves Presidents’ Day debates, and subscribe for more clear, honest conversations about how the American government actually works. If this helped, please leave a review—your feedback helps more curious listeners find the show.

In Pursuit

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School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership

Center for American Civics

Transcript

Meet Sharon McMahon

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Welcome back to Civic Seneer. Today's guest is somebody many of you already know and trust when it comes to making sense of American government and history. Sharon McMahon is a former high school government teacher, a leading voice in civic education, and a New York Times best-selling author. She has built a remarkable platform dedicated to civic literacy, historical accuracy, and thoughtful public conversation, helping millions of Americans separate fact from fiction. What I especially appreciate about Sharon is her commitment to primary sources, context, and the belief that ordinary citizens are fully capable of understanding complex issues when they are given clear and honest information. This is a spirit that also aligns perfectly with what we are trying to do here on our Civics in New Year's podcast and at Arizona State University's Center for American Civics. So, today and on our presidents day, we are talking about some civic myths about presidents. Our goal is to use this holiday as an opportunity to move beyond hero worship and toward a clearer, more realistic understanding of the presidency. We will identify common myths about presidential power, look at what the Constitution and history actually say, and model how citizens can evaluate claims about what presidents can and cannot do. Sharon, again, as an original governor, I am so glad you're here. Welcome to our podcast. Thanks for inviting me. It's really a pleasure to be with you. Thank you. So again, we're talking about civic myths of presidents. So President's Day often turns into this celebration of individual leaders. From a civics perspective, what do you think, or why do you think we're so drawn to focusing on presidents rather than systems?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Well, it's it's a lot easier to attach ourselves to individual characters. This is kind of human nature. We're attached to certain entertainers, we're attached to certain authors. You know, we we as humans are drawn to the stories that are attached to certain individuals. You know, humans, of course, make sense of the world through story. So it makes complete sense in my mind that it is an easier thing to get your arm around. It's an easier thing to feel an emotional attachment to than it is to get your arms around this big weighty system that isn't, you know, a theoretical concept versus a living, breathing human being with quirks and things that you might have in common with them. There's just a you know, there's a myriad of ways, but I think it's just it's easier for the human mind to identify with a human being.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

So when you're explaining civics, what are some of the most common misunderstandings that people have about what presidents can and cannot do?

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Well, I think a lot of educators and also parents will relate to this notion that children view leaders just kind of broadly speaking as the equivalent of an episode of Sophia the First, where there's like a king or a queen, and they can just be like, everyone gets 12 peanut butter MMs. You know, like it's like they can just make these pronouncements. Everyone gets cookies and a unicorn. And, you know, this is also sort of like backed up with even some of the assignments we might give to young children in elementary school. And that's not to say there's no fun or purpose in these assignments, but we we ask them things like if you were president for a day, what would you do? And it it sort of sort of reinforces this idea that presidents are, you know, pseudo-magical, pseudo-magical kings and queens that can just sort of like wave their hand and you know, peanut butter sandwiches appear. So I do think that that's I think that's part of the foundations of why we misunderstand things. But but in terms of specifics, there are a lot of adults who really misunderstand the role of each of the branches of government and the role that the president is meant to play at the top of only one of the branches of government. And this interplay of these three co-equal branches of government is it's I just think it's poorly understood. Quite broadly, it's poorly understood. And there's a variety of reasons for that. This is not shaming anybody if you were never taught this. There's a lot of there's plenty of blame to go around. But I mean, there are members of Congress sitting, sitting senators, Liz, who can't tell you the three branches of government. And that's not that I didn't make that up. That's real. That's happening today. And so if we if we don't expect if we don't hold our elected representatives to the standard of you need to understand how government works before you sit at the pinnacle of one of the branches of government, why should citizens be required to learn it? I think that's a common way for people to feel.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

So, what is one myth about presidential power that you hear all the time that the constitution simply just does not support?

SPEAKER_00 6:03

A big one is that when a president takes office, they can get rid of laws or rules that were passed before they took office. Now, if it was an executive order, they can. And you often see presidents, even on their first day, second day when President Trump took office again, during even his first week in office, he spent quite a bit of time undoing the executive orders of the previous administration. Biden did the same when he took office and reverse a lot of Trump's executive orders from Trump's first term. Uh, so executive orders can easily be reversed by a new incoming administration, but presidents do not have the ability to erase laws. And they also do not have the ability to enact legal executive orders that violate laws. So if the law says you have to be 18 to vote, a president cannot put together a legal executive order. Now they can write whatever they want down on paper, but it's not going to be legally enforceable. They can't write a legal executive order saying actually the voting age in the United States is 39. They cannot violate existing federal law. And of course, the Constitution sits atop existing federal law.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

So, why do you think then that we've come to expect presidents to solve problems that were never meant to be handled by the executive branch?

SPEAKER_00 7:29

That's a great question. And a huge part of it has to do with how dysfunctional Congress has become. Some of this has to do with gerrymandering, some of this has to do with money, some of this has to do with part partisan infighting. But rather than focusing on ways to work together to be able to solve problems for the American people, to be able to work together for the common good. Now people in Congress score points only within their own party. There is, there are no points to be scored broadly on the field. There's only points to be scored within their own party. And so often their party allegiance leads them away from working on behalf of the American public and only to working on behalf of their party. And so what happens then as a result is a complete quagmire where Congress does nothing. Congress argues about inconsequential things. It does not take meaningful action on things. It holds hearings and nothing ever comes of the hearings. And so consequently, if a president wants to get anything whatsoever done, they sometimes feel like, well, I don't have a lot of choices here. I tried to give y'all, I tried to push through a bill that was asking for reform on this topic. Nothing happened. And this is a huge problem that the American public needs to have solved. Given that you're doing nothing, I guess I'll try to do something. So it's understandable in the part in the mind of a president who may or may gen genuinely want to help some of their constituents. It's understandable why they would want to try to do something. Especially if you're a first-term president and you're looking at getting re-elected, you want to be able to have something to run on. I got to have something to run on. You even see this in in Congress, where certain members of Congress will stand up and yell at their own party on C-SPAN. What have you given me to run on? Nothing. Like I can't take this back to my district and say, vote for me again. Our party has done nothing. So it's not just the president who feels that way. But I do think that's part of it. And then there's a larger conversation to be had too about the expansion of executive power that maybe is beyond the scope of this, you know, short podcast window. But I do think some of it, some of the root of it is in the dysfunction of Congress.

Founders’ Intent And Modern Complexity

SPEAKER_01 10:06

That's so interesting. So we often talk about the what the founders intended, right? I especially in going into America 250, this seems to be this, you know, punchline, what the founders intended, especially when it comes to the presidency. What do you think is oversimplified or misunderstood in these conversations?

SPEAKER_00 10:29

You're right. And and this is language that is echoed by the Supreme Court, where they are making decisions that are very complicated. And one of the ways that they, you know, one of the parameters they use when making these decisions is what is deeply rooted in American history? That's a phrase that they use. Deeply rooted in American law and history. So it's understandable why this is a conversation that so many people are having. But in terms of where we're losing the nuance here has to do with, I mean, I could point to a million examples, but even the Supreme Court themselves say they are way in over their head when it comes to anything related to the internet. When it comes to anything related to the internet. How do we know? Okay, we're most of us are pushing 70 or we're over 70. Some of them are younger. And no shade to anybody who's 70. I think 70 is great. But this is not the group that is prides themselves on being at the cutting edge of all new technology. So the framers of the constitution were not so arrogant to believe that they could have thought of everything in advance. They were not arrogant enough to think they could predict the future. In fact, they were like, uh there's gonna be stuff y'all need to adjust. We did the best we could given the time constraints that we had, given the fact that fully one quarter of the people at the constitutional convention abandoned the volunteer group project that was writing the constitution before it was done. Like, we got to get something down on paper here. And y'all are gonna have to adjust in the future. And so we put two different ways that you can make some adjustments in the future if you need to and use those when you feel like you need it. I mean, like, this is kind of the vibe of you know, why these things were added into the constitution. Like, we don't, we did what we could. You're gonna have to adjust it later. Let us know. You know, like that's kind of that's that's the vibe. Unfortunately, we we uh for a variety of reasons, including the dysfunction of Congress, have not, we've done very little to adjust the Constitution for modern times. Hold. You know, we haven't passed a new amendment uh since the early 90s. We've done very little to even pass federal laws uh related to technology. One of my friends who's a comedian named Charlie Barens says brought worst is more regulated than many things on the internet. Okay. Like there's more regulations on something you throw on the grill than there than there are on data centers and AI. So there they're just the they it is very, very difficult to apply a document written in 1787 to a multinational thing, you know, that transcends all borders called the internet. And it's you can try, and it's it's pretty inadequate. And I think even the Supreme Court would agree with that.

How The Presidency Evolved

SPEAKER_01 14:07

So when we're talking about the founders, how much agreement was there actually among the founders about these executive powers?

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Actually, quite a bit. Actually, quite a bit. They they really spent a lot more time uh arguing about the structure of the legislative branch than they did about the constraints of the executive. Now, there was some disagreement. You know, people like to make fun of John Adams for being too monarchical, that he wanted the president to be referred to as your highness. And some people were like, why wouldn't they serve for life? Of course they would. And they were in their mind picturing a George Washington figure who was so deserving of the leadership and deserving of our accolades. Why wouldn't we want him at the helm? You know, they they're the these were finite human beings, of course. So there was some disagreement about some of the specifics about like how long should the terms be? They obviously didn't didn't have term limits when the constitution was originally written. What should we call this person? How are they chosen? By the way, like choosing, you know, how the president was chosen with the Electoral College, that was added at the end. And that was stuck in there by a committee who a small committee who got together and they were like, here's what we came up with. Does this work? And this was the only thing that people were willing to sort of like hold their noses and be like, fine, let's just get her done. It was this was not a like something that they spent a lot of time arguing about, the like how the electoral college was going to be set up. It was kind of snuck in there. Like they were like, Can we agree on this so we can go home, please? That was we've all been in those meetings. Okay, we've all been in those meetings where you're like, I don't care. What that's fine. Where earlier in the day, it might not have been so fine with you. You know what I'm saying? Like that was kind of like where they had reached that point. But in terms of what roles the president would have, they decided relatively, you know, I'm not saying there's no disagreement, but they decided relatively easily that this president would be both the head of state and head of government, unlike potential, you know, like unlike democracies that would come after afterward, where most democracies now separate out those roles. They decided that the president would be sharply constrained by a list of no's. You are not allowed to declare titles of nobility. And they also specifically delegated a handful of roles to the president, but they didn't understand the concept of an administrative state. They didn't under like that. They never envisioned needing environmental regulations, they never envisioned needing the FAA or airport security. Like these, the the concept of you know, executive branch rulemaking was not even something they were thinking about. They were thinking about one dude, one white dude. And they were thinking, like, how much damage could they do as long as we tell him he's not a king and he can't do king things, then we'll figure it'll be it's just gonna be George. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's George. So their version of what a president was going to be is perhaps a little different than what a president is today. And that's some of that is by necessity.

Media, Virality, And Power Myths

SPEAKER_01 17:44

I think some of it is media too. So my next question is about modern media in this 24-hour news cycle. How do you think that reinforces myths about presidential power?

SPEAKER_00 17:59

When literally everything that a president says, does, wears, wherever they go, whoever they associate with is subjected to 24-hour scrutiny. It it creates conversations around behaviors that in the past would not have been subjected to such scrutiny. You can there's a case to be made that modern media has made the presidency more transparent than it used to be. I think that's probably true. And there's a case to be made for that for that being of benefit to the public, that we can better see what's happening with our own two eyeballs. But it also, in some cases, perhaps creates, constructs meaning out of things that the president perhaps does not see as particularly meaningful. For example, Obama's tan suit.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

I was just gonna, when you said that, the first thing that popped in my head was the tan suit.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Obama's tan suit. You know, like what during the during the you know, during the Gulf War or during the Iraq War era, where George George W is in the flight suit and he's like mission accomplished. You know, that those shots would not have been heard around the world, proverbially proverbially speaking, in the past. Maybe you would have read a read about it in a newspaper weeks later, maybe. So I do think that some of our understanding of who presidents are is very much impacted by the internet, by the virality of information, and by a news media that makes money off of clicks and eyeballs. And in order to make money, they need to entice you to watch. And the primary, the you know, the most effective driver of human behavior is fear. And so if they can create some aspect of like, what kind of message is Obama trying to send with this tan suit? You know, like if they can make you feel like there's some sinister, insidious meaning behind everything, you're more likely to tune in. And sometimes there might be, but it sometimes it might just be an attempt to get attract eyeballs where none previously existed.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

So, do you think we've trained ourselves then to see every national issue as something the president needs to fix?

SPEAKER_00 20:29

I don't know that we think every issue is something the president needs to fix because I think most people don't have a lot of confidence in the pr in any president's ability to fix much. Regardless of who is in office. If Biden, when Biden was in office, low confidence in his ability to fix many things. Trump's first and second term, low confidence in his ability to fix things among the majority of those polled. Of course, there are minorities, minority numbers of people who think Trump's ability to fix things is high, or who think Biden's ability to fix things, and going back, these are not just about Trump and Biden. Yes. But I do think that we have a notion that a president should at least speak about every issue. And if you're not talking about Obama's handsuit, or you're not talking about that one, you know, person who fell off a boat on their, you know, college spring break trip, like literally things that would not normally be of large public attention now are expected to be. And if you don't comment on it, then we're gonna read into that. And if you do comment on it, we're gonna analyze what you say, of course.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

So when presidents make claims that they can do something, what are a few questions that citizens should ask to understand whether that claim is actually grounded in law?

Civic Lessons From Great Presidents

SPEAKER_00 22:06

What a great question. I do think we can use the similar standards to what the Supreme Court applies, which is is that claim supported by American history? Has a president done that in the past? If they have never done it in the past, and it you know, then there's a good, there's probably a good reason why. If they have never been able to legally do something in the past, uh, there's probably a good reason why that is the case. So this is one reason why I think it's important to learn history. So when a president says, I absolutely know that the moon is made of green cheese, and I will send people to harvest it and we will laser beam. A nice little package of green cheese to your house later today, so that you can look at that and be like, what are we talking about? No president has ever said that before. No president has ever made such a claim. Of course, that's a silly example, but it's very that's one rubric we can use. Have other presidents in the past tried to do this or something similar to it? And if so, were they successful at it? I do really think, though, that more Americans need to spend 20 minutes periodically, not just one time, 20 minutes reading the constitution for themselves. And I would suggest even reading an annotated constitution. There's a good one at the Annenberg Classroom. There's a good annotation at the National Constitution Center. Congress, Congress.gov has an annotated constitution. And what that is, is it's not just the plain text. It's also giving you the commonly held interpretations of what that means. And in some cases, like at the National Constitution Center, it'll give you a couple different views on legal scholars' interpretations of what is this article generally understood to mean? What is the establishment clause? How is that understood to be applied broadly across US history and law? So the Constitution is not long, it's not a book, it was designed to be printed in newspapers. It was intentionally short. And if people from 1787 could read and understand the Constitution, Americans are broadly better educated today than the entire American populace was in 1787. We are capable of accessing these resources to read it for ourselves and to refresh our memories on it and to move some of those concepts into the long-term storage of our memory, which is how we actually begin to sort of internalize some of the wrestling with these ideas. We don't just like skim it and be like, yeah, I got it. I mean, half of us, myself included, can't remember what we came into the bedroom for. Like, what am I doing in here? Again, I had to get something. Like, we all know how porous our short-term memories are. What was I supposed to? Who was I supposed to go? You know, like what did you have for breakfast on Monday? Unless you eat the same thing every single day, chances are good is unless your breakfast is a real aberration, is delivered by an elephant, set it on your front porch that you probably don't remember. So moving these concepts into our long-term storage allows us to better understand and access that information when it is called upon. So that's, I mean, that's a really foundational thing that I think all Americans have access to and would behoove all of us if more people spent time doing.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

I'm glad you brought up the National Constitution Center because when I was in the classroom, that's the one that my students used. And I loved the views of two different scholars on something because showing that a lot of these things are not black and white. There's nuance to them, and there's a lot of discussion that goes with it. So, President's Day is meant to be this, you know, reflection on leadership. And you and I are recording this actually on Abraham Lincoln's birthday. What do you think is the most important civic lesson people should take away about the presidency?

Studying Presidents Through Primary Sources

SPEAKER_00 26:20

What a great question. And I bet if you asked 25 historians, they would all have a different answer. But for me, any president, any successful president, when we look back at the presidencies of, you know, all of the people who have held the office, the people who consistently rank in our top five best presidents. Of course, nearly every American would put Abraham Lincoln at the top of that list, right? He's consistently ranked as the best president. And we have a very short list of who else is sort of at the top. They do share a number of common characteristics. One of them is their ability to articulate a vision for the future that people want to follow, a positive vision for the future. It is difficult to lead effectively from a position of uh fear-mongering. It is difficult to lead effectively from a position of everything is wrong and I alone can fix it. It is more effective. And this is true of in classrooms, this is true in boardrooms. These are just leadership lessons that you that are sort of not confined to the presidency. But the idea that I have a vision that I would like to invite you into is something that I think more people need to better understand about what makes an effective president. I would also say that the character qualities of presidents do matter. And the presidents that we regard with the highest esteem generally have a set of, they share a common set of civic virtues. And those civic virtues include things like fortitude, like working for the common good, like encouraging participatory democracy. There are plenty more, but they embody at least some civic virtues that other people can look to as sort of a guiding light. So to me, those are just a few things that I think of when we're thinking about civic lessons from presidents. I'm actually part of a very interesting, an interesting project right now that is going to be kicking off on President's Day that asks historians from a variety of different backgrounds and also includes all of the uh living former presidents, with the exception of Trump and Biden, who are, of course, one still in office, one just left, and this project started before you left office, and also former first ladies to reflect on all of the United States former presidents and some of the former first ladies, and asks them what are we meant to have learned today that applies to today? Not which battle strategies were really effective for George Washington. That there's I'm sure there's plenty of good things to learn there, but that's not super impactful in 2026. The muskets are not where it's at, right? Like we don't that what are we meant to learn from George Washington today? Today, what are we meant to learn from Abraham Lincoln today? And these are short essays that are going to be published by an organization called In Pursuit. It's run by the former archivist of the United States. The essays are actually meant to be classroom accessible, they're available for free. And I think that's also like if listeners want more, they want to go deeper on the presidents and want to go deeper on what we're meant to learn civically from each and every president. And there is something to learn. You can you can look that up. You can look up in pursuit, and they're available on the website, they're available on Substack, like you can print them out, etc.

SPEAKER_01 30:20

I love that. And listeners, we will link that. You're gonna have one more question because I did teach middle school for a long time, and I can hear the question now. I'm not gonna ask who your favorite president is, but I am gonna ask who do you think in your studies has been the most interesting president to study and to do research on?

Closing Thoughts And Resources

SPEAKER_00 30:43

I mean, I do have an affinity for studying John Adams, mostly because of his wife. Yes. Uh, I do love Abigail, and their story represents such a unique one in American history. Almost we we have we do not have another president and first lady in which we have 1,600 surviving letters between them. And those those 1,600 letters represent a picture into the American presidency and into public life. Of course, he held other offices before he became the president. They give a picture into what it was like to be, you know, to live through the revolution, to be a woman during those times. To what does it mean when your child dies? You know, the Adams suffered, the Adams has suffered personal setbacks as well. And I find him interesting to study from that standpoint. You know, they're also one of the only couples that uh lived apart for many years and so needed to write each other letters. John was in Europe while Abigail stayed behind. That's not true of other couples like James and Dolly Madison, where they spent all of their time together. They almost never wrote each other letters because they were almost never apart. And so we don't have corresponding set of like, dear, my darling James. You know, like we don't have that between the Madisons, or or frankly, anyone else. So I do find him very interesting to study. He lived a long life. He was the father of another president, he had a very intelligent wife, he suffered personal setbacks. He had a unique view on, you know, as a as a federalist, he had a unique view on American government. He was a lawyer, you know, like I there's just a lot there. There's a lot there in the life of John Adams that I still haven't reached the bottom of the well on.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

I love that. Sharon, thank you so much for sharing with us, you know, all of these gems for President's Day and also for utilizing your platform to encourage people to go deeper and to find these primary sources and really, you know, again, take away this fear and these, you know, clickbait things and really just look at what, you know, what the issue is, what the historical context is. We are so honored that you are a guest on our Simmons in Year podcast. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 33:09

It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.