Well, the major political parties supposedly nominate their best. The Republicans screwed the pooch this year…
We might be in need of an intelligence test for the candidate. The public, forget it.
First, I completely disagree with the OP’s proposal. Second, adopting that proposal would take a constitutional amendment, and good luck getting that passed.
I could favor a more rigorous medical opinion on the POTUS’s fitness to serve, but the necessary parties (like the Cabinet) already have that power. No major Constitutional change is necessary to remove a sickly or senile President. All that’s necessary is for it to be seen as an acceptable option by the public.
I’d be entirely opposed to a hard numerical age limit. Correlations between age and cognitive ability are true for populations, but shouldn’t be used for individuals. Even with the OP’s example of air traffic controllers: why a hard retirement age, and not a system of cognitive testing that weeds out the people who fail?
No, no, he’s their best.
Which I hope goes a long way toward explaining why I will never consent to another Republican presidency.
The government has changed a lot since the days the Constitution was written. I do actually think that experience running a large organization should be a requirement, whether a city or state government, a federal department, a large military force(division size or greater), or a large company.
Now Smapti brought up a good point, “telling people they couldn’t vote for who they want isn’t very democratic”. No, it’s not. But we have a bigger problem with our democracy right now: the President isn’t actually held politically responsible for failures in his government, at least not enough. That’s extremely dangerous to our democracy, because it means the executive branch is not accountable to voters. So we need people who CAN be held accountable, who we EXPECT to manage the unruly federal bureaucracy, by virtue of the fact that he has already proven he can manage an unruly smaller, but still large, bureaucracy.
The executive power, unlike the legislative power, is in the hands of one person. Once voters decide that that one person cannot be expected to do his constitutional and legal duties, then we have a serious problem. There are only three ways to solve this problem:
- Elect only experienced managers.
- Election of cabinet officials and possibly regional managers as well, where federal agencies are in charge of specific territories. It might also be a good idea to give the Vice President specific duties in a constitution amendment aside from just presiding over the Senate. Maybe the VP could be the actual manager of the domestic bureaucracy while the President handles foreign affairs, speechmaking, and relations with the legislative branch.
- Reduce the size of government so that any person over 35 is qualified to handle the job.
Or we could just punish parties who nominate obvious loons by refusing to vote for them. For the Presidency & on down the ballot.
Obama, of course. Obama also had experience as a state legislator. I think he’d have been a better president had he had to win his Senate seat twice and gotten more seasoning.
While the parties don’t usually nominate loons, and pure loons never win(fingers crossed), we have shown a tendency to nominate people more for the sizzle than the steak.
Actual requirements for the Presidency in 2016(must have at least one):
- Top level orator
- Famous name
- Celebrity
It’s gotten so bad that now we’re ready to coronate people based off of one speech and disqualify others because they had a bad speech. If the job of the President is going to become orator-in-chief, that’s fine, but we’re going to have to have some people running the actual government, so we might want to start electing cabinet officers.
That would also entail an almost-impossible-to-get constitutional amendment. The Constitution spells out the precise requirements for president, and any change, any at all, will require an amendment.
Thanks for pointing out something that was noted four days ago by Shodan and smapti, that has been discussed by quite a few others in this thread, and that you yourself said, in almost exactly the same words, three days ago.
I think we can take for granted, in this conversation, the fact that changing the requirements for President would necessitate a constitutional amendment.
You understand the premise of a “should” question, don’t you? People are not being asked for their opinion on whether a constitutional amendment would pass. They are being asked for their opinion about whether there should be more rigorous and specific qualifications for being elected to, or holding, the office of President.
“Should” has nothing to do with it. It’s not going to happen.
Hey, genius, read the damn thread title.
“Should” has everything to do with the specific question the OP was raising.
Similarly, if i ask the question, “Should heroin be legal,” it is not really pertinent to answer “It’s never going to happen, so why are we even talking about it?”
If i ask the question, “Should we abolish the designated hitter,” the fact that Major League Baseball has given no indication that it is considering such a move does not negate the validity of the question.
If the OP’s question had been, “What are the chances of adding new experience requirements for the position of President?” you’d have a point.
Constitutional amendments are only “impossible” because there’s no consensus about any particular change that is up in the air. When a consensus emerges, they actually pass pretty quickly. So this is not an impossible situation.
If American voters get too much into reality TV and internet celebrities who screw things up and yet the voters never learn, some order will be imposed on the process.
This is pretty much the epitome of threadshitting: declaring a thread pointless for external reasons.
Knock it off.
= = =
That said:
Let’s avoid rude responses, since direct personal attacks are also against the rules.
[ /Moderating ]
Not to mention that Fillmore and Tyler were never elected. Tyler became president when William Henry Harrison died, and Fillmore became president when Zachary Taylor died. Neither sought a second term. Tyler had a disastrous term and was nearly impeached. Fillmore, one of the most obscure presidents, apparently just didn’t like the job.
The problem is that no one has demonstrated that the proposed restrictions will actually help us choose the right person.
Restrictions on those who hold public office are fundamentally undemocratic. So, if we can’t articulate a very clear case for why they’re a good idea, we should oppose them on principle.
I don’t have a problem in theory with changes to the Constitution through the usual process. That what it’s there for. However something along these lines strikes me as very far fetched to get the necessary backing. As you (or somebody) later said, lots of proposed amendments are impossible till they suddenly are possible…but the overwhelming majority of those ever proposed are impossible and remain so. I’m as certain this one is among them as I could be of anything. 
The age limit for example seems to be going in the wrong direction. For 200 yrs of (originally much) less advanced medicine we didn’t need it, but now that lives (and useful lives) might be drastically extended in the not distant future we would put in such a hard wired limit?
And needless to say the requirement to be firmly a political insider is one particularly unlikely to gain support right now. Also I don’t see what’s special about being a general v being a company CEO. Different yes, specially qualifying to be elected head of govt, don’t see it, not categorically. That kind of value judgement that seems particularly misplaced as one of the ground rules as opposed to something voters decide case by case.
In short and as others have said, even the existing qualifications are basically superfluous.