Claim: Ronald Reagan came after George Washington.

The President of the United States is the elected head of state and head of government of the United States . The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces . The president is indirectly elected to a four-year term by the people through an Electoral College -LRB- or by the House of Representatives , should the Electoral College fail to award an absolute majority of votes to any person -RRB- .   Since the office was established in 1789 , 44 people have served as president . The first , George Washington , won a unanimous vote of the Electoral College . Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms in office , and is counted as the nation 's 22nd and 24th president . Thus the incumbent , Donald Trump , is the nation 's 45th president . There are currently five living former presidents . The most recent death of a former president was on December 26 , 2006 with the death of Gerald Ford ; the most recently serving president to die was Ronald Reagan on June 5 , 2004 .   William Henry Harrison spent the shortest time in office , dying 31 days after taking office in 1841 . Franklin D. Roosevelt served the longest , over twelve years , before dying early in his fourth term in 1945 ; he is the only president to have served more than two terms . Since the ratification of the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1951 , no person may be elected president more than twice , and no one who has served more than two years of a term to which someone else was elected may be elected more than once .   Of the individuals elected as president , four died in office of natural causes -LRB- William Henry Harrison , Zachary Taylor , Warren G. Harding , and Franklin D. Roosevelt -RRB- , four were assassinated -LRB- Abraham Lincoln , James A. Garfield , William McKinley , and John F. Kennedy -RRB- , and one resigned -LRB- Richard Nixon -RRB- . John Tyler was the first vice president to assume the presidency intra-term , and set the precedent that a vice president who does so becomes the fully functioning president with his own presidency , as opposed to a caretaker president . The Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution put Tyler 's precedent into law in 1967 . It also established a mechanism by which an intra-term vacancy in the vice presidency could be filled . Richard Nixon was the first president to fill a vacancy under this Provision when he appointed Gerald Ford to the office . Later , Ford became the second to do so when he appointed Nelson Rockefeller to succeed him . Previously , an intra-term vacancy was left unfilled .   Throughout most of its history , politics of the United States have been dominated by political parties . The Constitution is silent on the issue of political parties , and at the time it came into force in 1789 , there were no parties . Soon after the 1st Congress convened , factions began rallying around dominant Washington Administration officials , such as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson . Greatly concerned about the very real capacity of political parties to destroy the fragile unity holding the nation together , Washington remained unaffiliated with any political faction or party throughout his eight-year presidency . He was , and remains , the only U.S. president never to be affiliated with a political party . Since Washington , every president has been affiliated with a political party at the time they assumed office .