How much do we care about the distinction between "The/A President" and "The Office of the President?"

It seems every American movie in recent memory where the White House, or some organ of the U.S. government is attacked and the President is injured, held hostage, or otherwise compromised there is one character or another that must use the perfunctory line: “The Office of the President is bigger than any one man.”

“Dimensions” (i.e. the cultural dimensions that I talk about in my book) regarding something as tricky as values or “culture,” are not black and white. But even though these differences are not ironclad and easily identifiable, there is a point where cultural differences do matter. You have been to the movies, and you know what I mean. Chinese screenwriters don’t have the corresponding stock line.

The Western model is institution unambiguously above the individual. Mind you, I don't necessarily think this is how governance is practiced in the West today--I am just talking about abstract ideals.

Maybe we don't immediately think of it that way, but in the American practice it is a default to reflexively point out “The President” and “The Office of The President of The United States of America”. I wonder if that reflex is not as well honed in greater China because institutions can be synonymous with an individual, if not subsumed by an individual.