President of the United States(3) (新手日記)

新手 | 17th Mar 2008 | Biography | (53 Reads)

Qualification, disqualification and common practice

Article Two of the Constitution sets the principal qualifications to be eligible for election as President. A Presidential candidate must:

be a natural-born citizen of the United States
be at least thirty-five years old
have been resident in the United States for at least fourteen years

Additionally, there are two negative qualifications. Under Article One of the United States Constitution, no Presidential candidate can have previously held the office and been removed by conviction for an impeachable offense. And under the Twenty-Second Amendment, no person who has previously served as President or Acting President for more than six years (one full-term and two additional years) is eligible for election to the Presidency or to the Vice Presidency. Former Presidents who have served less than six years as President or Acting President, however, remain eligible for the presidency (assuming they were not removed from office by the Congress on a bill of impeachment) for one term only; but their eligibility to serve as Vice President is unlimited, because Amendment XXII only applies to the Presidency.

Foreign-born Americans at the time the Constitution was adopted were also eligible to become President, provided they met the age and residency requirements.

The United States Government was non-partisan prior to 1792, so the Constitution says nothing about political parties. From 1796 to the Civil War, it was common for political parties to fracture and put forward more than one candidate. The classic example is the 1824 election, in which political parties officially played no role because all of the candidates were from the same party. This also was the only election in which the recipient of the most Electoral votes (Andrew Jackson) did not become President (as he did not have a majority of the Electoral College votes). The election was then decided by the United States House of Representatives who elected John Quincy Adams as President instead.

The Civil War brought home how dangerous political fracture can be for the nation, with the result the two largest parties at the time—Democratic and Republican—remade themselves into broad coalitions of liberals and conservatives. Consequently, all presidents since the Civil War have been nominees of one of these two major political parties.

Nevertheless, there have been seven important third-party candidates since the Civil War:

In the 1892 election, James Weaver (Populist Party) won four states, taking twenty-two electoral votes
In the 1912 election, third-party candidate, former Republican and former President Theodore Roosevelt (Progressive Party a.k.a. "Bull Moose Party") actually bested the losing major party candidate, taking six states and eighty-eight electoral votes, while sitting President William Howard Taft (Republican) took two states and eight electoral votes—and Democrat Woodrow Wilson took the White House.
In the 1924 election, Robert M. La Follette, Sr. (Progressive) took one state, with thirteen electoral votes.
In the 1948 election, Strom Thurmond (Dixiecrat) won four states, taking thirty-nine electoral votes
In the 1960 election, Harry F. Byrd (Democrat) did not run for President but received fifteen electoral votes from three states. All eight of Mississippi's electors voted for Byrd as President and Strom Thurmond as Vice President; six of Alabama's electors did likewise, while one faithless Republican elector from Oklahoma cast his votes for Byrd as President and for Barry Goldwater as Vice President.
In the 1968 election, Alabama Governor George Wallace (American Independent Party) won five states, taking forty-six electoral votes.
In the 1992 election, Reform Party candidate Ross Perot took nearly 19% of the popular vote at the national level, but he won no states and thus received no electoral votes.

In 2005, two amendments to the Constitution of the United States were proposed to permit persons having been citizens of the United States for many years but not being natural-born citizens to hold the Office of President. Neither bill got any further action beyond that year. H.J.RES.2, introduced on January 4, 2005, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI-14) and cosponsored by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA-27), would require 20 years of citizenship for naturalized Americans to be eligible to hold the Office of President.^[3] H.J.RES.42, introduced on April 14, 2005, sponsored by Rep. Vic Snyder (D-AR-2) and cosponsored by Christopher Shays (R-CT-4), would require 35 years of citizenship for naturalized Americans to be eligible to hold the offices of President and Vice President.^[4]

Finally, while they are not in any way requirements:

Thirty-one of forty-two Presidents had military service records; all but one of them (James Buchanan) served as an officer
Every president has had prior experience as a Congressman, Senator, Cabinet Secretary, Governor, General in the U.S. Army, or as Vice President of the United States.
Every president to date has been a white male, but this may change in the next election with either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama running for the Democrats.