A prescient insight...

"The President in particular is very much a figurehead... but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the president is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character, His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. On those criteria [he] is one of the most successful presidents the galaxy has ever had. He has already spent two of his ten presidential years in prison for fraud". 

Douglas Adams, 1978