So Who Gets to Become President?

     After centuries of rule under a harsh royal dictator, it was only reasonable that the Founding Fathers would institute some amount of restrictions on who could assume the most coveted position in the United States government. They highlighted the most obvious targets; age, background, and any tangible way to measure loyalty. Thus, the great framers enacted a clause in Article 2 Section 1, that states:

 "No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States." ^[1]

     This sounds great; establish an age requirement so the president has enough wisdom and experience in life, make sure they have been a resident for 14 years to prove their loyalty to the Union, and they have to be natural born. But wait... what is this "natural born" clause?

     G. Edward White, a distinguished professor in the College of Law at the University of Virginia, wrote an article expanding on this topic. Professor White asserts that although the Constitution never explicitly defined the "natural born" term, to the casual citizen, it seems fairly overt that the clause refers to people who are born inside the United States or to American parents. The early delegates chose to implement this restriction because, not surprisingly, they feared the impact the purely British born subjects may have. Yet this issue has since sparked much more debate, especially considering the extent to which we are an immigrant population and how we no longer need to fear any one country in particular.^[2] 

     The interesting impediments to the office of the Presidency have done a great deal in dictating who actually became president. The stated clause above, of course, cannot stand by itself. Other issues in the constitution have been equally momentous. For example, neither women nor African Americans were guaranteed any political rights in the original constitution; this was not formally achieved until 1870 for Blacks (15th amendment) and 1920 for women (19th amendment). Prejudice against these minorities impeded full participation in electing the President until the late 20th century. Such a political atmosphere has resulted in an executive office that has been primarily occupied by white males. There is one notable exception - our current president, Barack Obama, clearly does not fall under any of these descriptors. 

     Race and gender are not the only determinants to the presidency. Another prominent one is religion. Our great country, as you may already know, was founded at the hands of starch protestants. It is no surprise, then, that we have only had one Roman Catholic president (John F Kennedy).

     To be sure, there is a great degree of diversity amongst our many presidents. We’ve had a former peanut wholesaler from Georgia (Jimmy Carter), an actor (Ronald Reagan), a CIA chief (George H.W. Bush), and a former managing director of a major league baseball team (George W Bush).  Thus, the notion f anyone can one day become president does to some extent ring true.

Table 3.1 The demographics of our presidents - their ages, parties, religions, and residential states. 

Previous Section: The Presidency                                                                                                              Next Section: Electing the President