There are a few well-worn paths to the U.S. presidency.  Hillary Clinton is following one of them.  Donald Trump is not.

Trump has never been vice president, elected to the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives, or served as the governor of one of the 50 U.S. states.  Of the 43 people who have been president, 37 of them held at least one of those positions prior to taking office.

For the six presidents with no major elected office on their resume, being a war hero like George Washington or Dwight Eisenhower or a Cabinet secretary like William Taft or Herbert Hoover was enough to mount a successful campaign.  Neither Trump nor Clinton were in the military.

Once officially selected as the Republican nominee in July, Trump will be the party’s second consecutive candidate with a business background.  Mitt Romney ran in 2012, losing to President Barack Obama, but in addition to being a businessman he had also served a term as the governor of Massachusetts.

For Clinton, her credentials include both a major elected office and a Cabinet position.  She represented New York in the Senate until becoming Obama’s secretary of state during his first term.  Obama was also a senator before running for president, as is Clinton’s Democratic opponent Bernie Sanders.

But while Clinton’s path was once a near certain way to become president, those days are distant American history.

In the country’s earliest days, four of the first eight presidents had been the secretary of state.  Since then, only James Buchanan has followed that path.  He was elected in 1856.  And before Obama was elected in 2008, the last president with congressional service but no time as either vice president or governor was John F. Kennedy, who took office in 1961.

One historic advantage for Clinton is her career as a lawyer.  More than half of all U.S. presidents have been lawyers, including Obama.

However, history is not kind to Clinton in a way that massively favors Trump.  He, like all previous U.S. presidents, is a man.  She is expected to become the first woman ever to lead a major party’s presidential ticket when the Democrats hold their party convention in July.

Throughout the nomination campaign, Trump touted his ability to use his wealth to fund his candidacy instead of relying on major donations from outsiders.  According to comments he made in an interview Wednesday, if elected president he would use his wealth to be different in yet another way.  He told ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live that instead of drawing the $400,000 yearly salary set for presidents, he would only take $1, thus becoming easily the lowest paid U.S. leader in history.

But as all previous presidents could attest, even the most well meaning campaign statements do not automatically become true when a candidate is elected.  Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution states that the president’s compensation “shall neither be increased nor diminished during the period for which he shall have been elected,” meaning it would take an act of Congress and Obama’s signature before inauguration day for the pay cut to take effect.
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