This show was destined to go downhill.

At some point they had to get past the interesting 'designated survivor' angle, and just become a show about the president dealing with problems. I thought they would have carried the original idea at least into the second season, but it turns out it stopped when season one did.
Add to that the fact that Hollywood writers can't seem to keep their liberal political opinions out of TV shows, especially shows about presidents. That's especially glaring on this show, since a lot of people tuning in are doing so because of Kiefer Sutherland, following him from 24, which had a decidedly conservative bent. From a conservative point of view, it feels really weird to see Jack Bauer spouting liberal fluff. And one of the worst things about liberal-written shows and movies, is that they don't even try to make a legitimate argument from the other side. Conservative characters are written as shallow and mean, and are present only to perpetuate the idea that their point of view is invalid and can be ignored. Some of the references to Trump in DS are so ham-handed, they make me laugh out loud.
I never watched West Wing because I knew it would be a liberal circle-jerk, and I had hopes DS would be something different. It was for a while, but it's obvious it's falling into the same paradigm. So I'm done.