Fuck, there are already endless stupid arguments of exactly what is meant by “natural born Citizen,” you wan to add more? :rolleyes:
Paper qualifications mean nothing. Richard Nixon was heavily vetted by Republican party leaders before they asked him to run for his first congressional race. For his reelection, he actually won BOTH the Democratic and Republican primaries. He won his Senate race by 20 percentage points, was picked as Vice President twice and narrowly lost the 1960 presidency. That’s six different election campaigns.
Probably no presidential candidate has ever been as thoroughly scrutinized before being elected as Nixon, but still nobody in their right minds really believed he would really pull all the dumb shit he did after he was elected.
Sure, why not? If a majority of the American public wants to elect a 34-year-old, why shouldn’t it be their decision? And if a majority of the American public wants to elect a 90-year-old, that should be their decision, too.
Allowing 51% to change the Constitution is a different matter. The Constitution contains some provisions that are specifically aimed at protecting the rights of minorities from abuse by the majority, and making it too easy to change would undermine that.
You need to be an Australian citizen, not a dual citizen. That’s about it.
Some disqualifying rules on insolvency, convictions for treason, not being a government employee or member of defence force etc.
Don’t even need to be a member of parliament, provided that you are within 3 months of the appointment.
It’s slightly more complicated to become a member of parliament:Qualification
You could, in theory become Australian Prime Minister whilst still at high school, having never previously voted and being qualified only on the basis having citizenship by birth or naturalisation. [Australia’s 3rd PM, Chris Watson might not even have had that]
The OP’s premise is flawed, the only valid term limits are called elections.
Thank you for the helpful information.
I wonder why the OP is so concerned about the qualifications for U.S. President, when the qualifications for Prime Minister are even looser in his own country???
+1
Exhibit A: Donald Trump. Maybe we’ve been lucky so far, but this is as close as the US has ever come to having a truly evil mentally unstable fascist take office. One more Trump and it’s time to put requirements in the Constitution.
So, who’s going to tie the bell on the cat? Doesn’t amending the Constitution require some concerted effort? Which would include members of the party that put Trump on our ballots.
Neither Trump’s age nor lack of relevant experience is the problem; it’s the “truly evil mentally unstable fascist” part.
We have to prove this country deserves to continue by beating Trump utterly in November. Defeating as many other Republicans as possible might convince that party to begin “vetting” candidates better.
Right, the OP proposal does nothing to prevent a same-as-Trump-but-who-happened-to have a combined 8 years in some public office or another (on the strength of demagoguing the Jesus Bless Our Guns demographic) from winning the primaries. Plus as mentioned earlier, not all public posts are like one another.
The test of physical and mental endurance is the campaign itself, as** Little Nemo** pointed out. If that doesn’t kill you, you probably still have 4 good years in you.
I would support the same changes to qualifications in Australia. As for why I’m concerned about US politics, well what you guys do does tend to effect the entire world, economically, culturally, militarily.
My thinking is that the POTUS is supposed to be, in theory, the servant of the people, not the other way around. Makes sense to me they should have demonstrated some minimum track record of service to qualify. Which is why I’d say state legislature would qualify, it’s not so much about the experience but demonstrating you are actually willing to put in time in service. That would disqualify billionaires that want to buy their way into a nomination, because I doubt they’d want to spend 8 years of service (legislature, mayor, governor, military, etc etc etc) before hand.
Moreover, consider who this rule would have disallowed. Greats such as Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR would have never been able to hold the office.
Leave it to the voters to decide whether the candidate’s experience is suitable.
But what you’re missing is that they sometimes choose the wrong person. Given that, don’t you think there should be more restriction in place to ensure they choose the right person?
I live in the United States, and yet there are times when i involve myself in discussions about things going on in other countries. You understand, i presume, that it is possible for a person to take an interest in more than one thing at a time?
Trump’s problems have nothing to do with his age or experience. It would be great to have a clause in the Constitution that requires presidential candidates to be sane but I don’t see how you’re going to come up with an objective standard on that.
Good point. I just think that if we see more elections with firebrands aspiring to the presidency as their first elective office, we’re going to wind up with a new Hitler. I’d prefer they prove themselves by winning a couple of statewide elections first. If I had my druthers, win two elections as Senator or Governor.
Experience, no.
Max age cutoff, yeah probably.
There’s no process improvement that can protect us against choosing an unstable maniac as President, other than the people as a whole deciding not to do that.
Self-government only works as long as the people decide that self-government is desirable. If the people decide the throw out the constitution and select a dictator, then that’s what will happen.
It’s a ridiculous idea that we can just invent some test that Trump wouldn’t pass, and decide that would be a good test to protect us against future Trumps. It the rooster thinking his crowing causes the sun to rise.
The only way to preserve our democracy is to not choose unfit people. So how about we vote against Trump this year? Trump’s reality show shtick worked this year because his primary opponents were completely unprepared for it and caught flatfooted. We’re certainly going to see an army of goofy reality show candidates put themselves forward in 2020, but they’re not going to get the traction that Trump got, mostly because we can point out how awful Trump was.
Sure. But I wouldn’t presume to go to an Australian message board and start a thread suggesting ways that they change their electoral system. The thought wouldn’t even occur to me.
I guess I don’t understand that mindset. Shrug.
Who’d you vote for in 2008? McCain or Obama?
Why don’t we have voters select a group of wise people, who can examine the candidates closely and then select the one they feel is best qualified?
We could call it the Electoral College.