Let’s not rely on the banal answer that anyone who’s 35 years of age or older, born in the United States, and has been a resident of the United States for fourteen years is qualified to be president. Those are the Constitutional requirements not the qualifications. Or on the circular answer that if you receive the requisite number of electoral votes, you’re qualified.
In my view to be qualified for president a candidate should possess:
- Foreign policy experience including military experience. These are the primary duties of the president.
- Experience with government. IMO without such experience the bureaucracy will simply run circles around the president. Being elected to the Senate doesn’t count.
- Certain qualities of temperament.
Based on those qualifications you can see why I didn’t vote for Trump. I didn’t think he was qualified. I still don’t by reason of temperament.
However, based on those qualifications as far as I can tell there are only two candidates in the Democratic field who are even tangentially qualified and those are Joe Biden and Tulsi Gabbard. John Hickenlooper and Steve Bullock are more qualified than most but are lacking in foreign policy experience. All of the rest are lacking in one or all of the qualifications.
IMO Tulsi Gabbard doesn’t have a chance of even being the vice presidential candidate. She is simply too detested among a certain segment of Democrats. Joe Biden is by far the frontrunner due to name recognition and the possibly misplaced conviction that he can win.
It’s demonstrably not necessary to have military experience. Wilson, FDR, Clinton and Obama didn’t. Lincoln virtually didn’t, but Jeff Davis was a West Point grad.
One that is becoming relevant — he or she is not too old.
I had reservations in 2016 when Trump, Clinton, and Sanders were 70, 69, 74. I have even graver reservations in 2020 when Trump, Biden, Sanders, Warren are 74, 77, 78, 70.
FDR was Assistant Secretary of the Navy from 1913-1920 (covers WWI).
Steve
Isn’t anyone else as tired as I am of people who can’t actually do the job of president being elected?
Clinton was marginally qualified when elected as was George W. Bush but just marginally. Obama was not qualified enough. Trump is not qualified enough. Right now either Trump will be re-elected or we are very likely to elect yet another president who is only marginally qualified or unqualified.
Any President, to count as truly qualified, will have to have lived, worked or studied in a foreign country and have an understanding of various cultures and fluency in a couple of foreign languages or Greek, Hebrew or Latin. Do we have any who come close?
The last President truly fluent in a foreign language was Teddy Roosevelt (French), though Hoover spoke some Chinese. All in all, our leader of all branches of our federal government have been monolingual, Heterosexual, Protestant, White Males ignorant of STEM.
Maggie Thatcher and Angela Merkel stand head and shoulders above all of them.
Hoover had a pretty good command of Latin, too. Franklin Roosevelt had some conversance with German and French. Nixon knew some Latin. Bill Clinton studied Latin and German in high school and reportedly spoke comprehensible German.
“Isn’t anyone else…â€
Yes, but you have pretty much limited the field to governors with a military background or senior career military, or businessmen with a military background. Further, to win every candidate must adopt not an administrative competency platform but a policy/basket of goodies platform. Vote for me, I’m Superman or woman. (Next up, SuperTranny). There is a lot to be said for policy vs caretaking in today’s world. You won’t get much legislating out of Congress. But it entices the goodie giving impulse.
It’s a bleak outlook. Once again I say. Limit the power of government to meddle. Don’t wish for the perfect candidate. Government incentives are not consistent with freedom, good governance or limited scope. The “right†candidate is the rarest of breed.
I’m not looking for the perfect candidate. I’m looking for a candidate who doesn’t run on a domestic platform and then proceed to spend all of his or her time on foreign policy. Presidents don’t have that much influence on domestic policy. Spending time on the military, foreign policy, making appointments, and administering the executive branch are in the job description.
If I had my druthers I’d amend the Constitution to prohibit sitting senators from running for president.
@Schuler:
It seems that Hoover was our most competent President, seeing that he spoke Chinese and Latin (?). He was also arguably the most competent in STEM, by far. So how did everything go so wrong– Only to be saved by Hitler and Hirohito?
Serving as Assistant Secretary of the Navy (FDR) is NOT military service, else every President would perforce end up a military veteran. HaHa.
It would be much more interesting to read an analysis of the degree of erudition in world-wide culture and language, as well as STEM among our ruling class. I imagine there are taxi-drivers in Istanbul more qualified to leadership than our current lot.
I’m still not paying a whole lot of attention to the Democratic primary.
But in general, I agree and it’s an ongoing frustration for me as well. As I’ve noted before, I vote primarily based on foreign policy and am perennially disappointed.
Let’s put it this way. You’re about to give somebody the keys to 4,000 nukes, maybe the most deadly force on the planet. Do you pick that person by looking around and finding somebody who doesn’t know anything about history other than what he or she learned in high school and is willing to give you the highest educational subsidy? There’s something missing here. To placate anti-Trumpers, you also don’t look around for somebody who’s built a bunch of hotels.
Presidential elections as “Dancing With the Stars”. Sheesh.
Joe Biden has negative foreign policy credibility as far as I am concerned. You could literally take the reverse of every foreign policy position he’s ever taken and gotten a better result. A Biden presidency would literally be a last days of Woodrow Wilson rerun except with more gaffes and slip-ups. You can be old and mentally and physically fit and vigorous; he looks and acts old, tired, and confused.
Also, i would like to consider a Presidential candidate on the basis of hers team. Used to be, candidates came up through the ranks, were groomed by the party, and cabinet candidates, chief of staff candidates, advisers, were readily available on their their Rolodex.
Trump came to office virtually alone and relied upon holdover appointees while also favoring retired military men he came to really know later on when he fired them. Today, He leans heavily on his daughter and son-in-law when he (if ever) feels he needs advice.
Go through the long list of Dem. candidates and ask, outside of Biden, WHO would be on the team in Washington if elected.
If any of the present Democratic presidential candidates with the possible exceptions of Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, or Marianne Williamson is elected president, the “team” would be the regular list of Democratic Party operatives, apparatchiks, and hangers-on. A little seasoning might be provided from the individual candidates’ staffs but that would be about it.
If any of the “outsiders” is elected, anything could happen.