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Presidential Eligibility

This version was saved 14 years, 4 months ago View current version     Page history
Saved by Safatul
on November 3, 2009 at 11:52:45 pm
 

 

So Who Gets to Become President

 

     After centuries of rule under a harsh and ungodly royal dictator, it was only reasonable that the Founding Fathers would institute some amount of restrictions on who can 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." 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, recently 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. 

http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/news/2009_fall/white_oped.html

 

 

 

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). In reality, however, prejudice against these minorities impeded full participation 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 one 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 of anyone can one day become president does to some extent ring true.

 

 

Table 3.1 summarizes the demographics of our presidents. 

 

 

President Age when Elected Party Religion Race
George Washington 57 NA Episcopalian White
John Adams 61 Federalist Unitarian White
Thomas Jefferson 57 Anti-Federalist Episcopalian White
James Madison 57       
James Monroe 58       
John Quincy Adams 57       
Andrew Jackson 61       
Martin Van Buren 54       
William Henry Harrison 68       
John Tyler 51       
James K. Polk 49       
Zachary Taylor 64       
Millard Fillmore 50       
Franklin Pierce 48       
James Buchanan 65       
Abraham Lincoln  52       
Andrew Johnson  56       
Ulysses S Grant  46       
Rutherford B Hayes  54       
James Garfield  49       
Chester Arthur  51       
Grover Cleveland  47       
Benjamin Harrison 55      
Grover Cleveland 55      
William McKinley  54       
Theodore Roosevelt  42       
William Howard Taft  51       
Woodrow Wilson  56       
Warren Harding  55       
Calvin Coolidge  51       
Herbert Hoover  54       
Franklin D Roosevelt  51       
Harry Truman         
Dwight Eisenhower         
John F Kennedy         
Lyndon B johnson         
Richard Nizon         
Gerald Ford         
Jimmy Carter         
Ronald Reagan         
George Bush         
Bill Clinton         
George Bush         
Barack Obama         
         
         
 

 

 

 

 

 

1) http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/news/2009_fall/white_oped.html 

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