What are the qualifications to become president? I’m not asking about qualities, mind you, I’m talking about qualifications.
As everyone knows, or should know, the Constitution supplies part of the answer: “Clause 5. 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.”
Recall how Barack Obama’s candidacy refocused national attention on the meaning of “Natural Born Citizen” and even John McCain, who was born in Panama (son of a U.S. Navy officer) stirred discussion as to whether he was indeed a “Natural Born Citizen” under the original meaning of the Law that Governs Government. But most people, it’s fair to say, generally accept that when a twenty-first century politician runs for president that they pass constitutional muster.
That being said, the Constitution itself doesn’t dish on what qualities said political office seeker must possess in order to fulfill the duties of the presidency. Theoretically speaking, therefore, any old (or middle aged) American who was born here – and resided in the country for fourteen years – is eligible to be president. This broad definition opens up the proverbial floodgates to allow for practically anyone to serve as president if they’re able to win a majority in the Electoral College.
How far does the logic stretch? Picture an elderly care facility patient who’s a lifelong citizen (born here) and spent his or her days residing in one of the fifty states. As long as he or she possesses the faculties to legally satisfy capacity requirements, that person qualifies for consideration to run for president under the law. He or she wouldn’t have to be able to walk – or probably even talk – but there wouldn’t be anything from a legal standpoint to prevent their election.
Needless to say, there’s been plenty of discussion about whether senile Joe Biden is qualified to be president given his rapidly deteriorating mental condition and perceived inability to do much other than show up to official events, read off a teleprompter and (sometimes) shake hands with phantom onlookers.
But, much of the below-the-surface worries about senile Joe’s physical and mental state has to do with what comes next, namely the prospect of vice president cackling Kamala Harris being sworn-in as president after Biden is incapacitated according to the Constitution. Harris presumably is qualified to be president, but her qualities are open to debate. Shouldn’t Kamala be a bigger part of the 2024 competition for presidential election votes?
“According to Harris’ official White House bio, which sounds as though it was written by the DEI department at Columbia University, as ‘the first woman, the first Black American, and the first South Asian American to be elected to this position,’ she has:
“’worked to bring people together to advance opportunity, deliver for families, and protect fundamental freedoms across the country. She has led the fight for the freedom of women to make decisions about their own bodies, the freedom to live safe from gun violence, the freedom to vote, and the freedom to drink clean water and breathe clean air,’ the bio continues. ‘While making history at home, she is also representing the nation abroad—embarking on more than a dozen foreign trips, traveling to more than 19 countries, and meeting with more than 150 world leaders to strengthen critical global alliances.’
“In other words, Harris has accomplished next to nothing, unless, of course, one considers admonishing Supreme Court Justices for their decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, calling voter ID racist, and doing zilch to stop violent crime from ravaging American cities, including in her own backyard in D.C., which just experienced its deadliest year in more than two decades—and has seen violent crime spike by nearly 40 percent.”
It’s true, Kamala Harris has been a failure as vice president in just about every discernible way. She’s rude, stupid, clueless, inarticulate, absent-minded, condescending, embarrassing and incompetent. Yet, if senile Joe Biden somehow manages to win another term, she’s got a darn good shot at someday becoming the 47th president.
Harris is more than just a cautionary future tale, however. She’s got real power even if it’s just potential at this moment. Nevertheless, as each day passes and senile Joe gets older and older, her odds of eventually assuming the Oval Office improve that much more. Her qualifications haven’t changed… and her qualities today are just as lacking as they were on January 20, 2021 (her first day in office, in case you were wondering).
With all the recent talk about the qualities – and qualifications – that Donald Trump needs to consider as he vets his possible 2024 running mate, it’s vital that we conservatives, as Trump backers and voters, compile our own set of “must haves” for such a person. For it’s obvious that senile Joe Biden only considered skin color and gender in selecting cackling Kamala Harris from California in 2020, a lack of interest in depth that’s come back to haunt Americans in Biden’s presidency and will be even more stark and hurtful if, as Keltz hinted at in his piece, Kamala ever becomes president.
This alone should supply sufficient justification to vote for Donald Trump. It isn’t likely that the possibility of Kamala becoming commander in chief motivated a hundred-thousand people to show up at Trump’s recent rally at Wildwood (New Jersey), but here’s thinking at least some percentage of Trump backers grasp the emergency-type situation with senile Joe Biden and his set-in-stone Democrat successor.
And it’s not as though the party’s voters choose a vice president. There’s no primary season for running mates and the person selected is all-but rubber stamped at the party convention. Has there ever been a serious effort at a quadrennial nominating event to reject a running mate? It just doesn’t happen. Why? Because, hypothetically speaking, parties have spent months shoring up the candidates themselves and generally leave, as is customary, the party nominee-to-be to choose his or her own number two.
And that’s how the United States, supposedly the greatest “democracy” on the planet, ends up with a loser like Kamala Harris just a heartbeat away from the levers of power.
Would the voters, if given the chance, have gone along with granting Kamala Harris that kind of power in 2020? It’s impossible to say, but Harris’s own presidential candidacy tanked so quickly and so badly that she took herself out of the running more than a month before Iowa was set to hold its caucuses. It could be argued that doing so – quitting the 2020 race before any votes were even cast – was the smartest political move cackling Kamala ever made. Who knows, seeing how arrogant and inane she is, somebody else must’ve made the call for her.
For if she had run and finished sixth or worse in all of the early nominating states, Harris would’ve been toast in terms of consideration to be senile Joe’s veep. Not even Biden himself is senseless enough to risk his electoral viability on an air-brain empty-pantsuit like Kamala if it were widely believed that she was a potential disaster waiting to happen.
Now, unfortunately for senile Joe, he’s stuck with her. Period. As argued before on a number of occasions, Democrats couldn’t possibly push cackling Kamala to the side or risk alienating a couple of their most loyal voting constituencies – single women and Black women – so Harris is about as etched in stone as a liberal politician could be in 2024 Democrat-land.
It’s often said that the running mate position doesn’t matter much to the presidential nominee or the voters, and in most elections, this is true. But not in 2024. Both heads of the tickets – Trump and Biden – will become lame ducks on their first day in the 2025 White House. Both men are well past normal retirement age and both have their proverbial days numbered in terms of political longevity.
But no matter the status, Kamala Harris’s qualities won’t improve or ever get better. Trump’s running mate, on the other hand, will have quite a lot of room to grow, which is something the Republican must think about in his vetting process.
Trump has indicated he wants someone who could govern the country, but he also must decipher whether that person can lead the MAGA movement. The last thing Trump would hope for is to choose an establishment-type candidate purely for win-the-election-now reasons. Whomever that person turns out to be, he or she will have a leg-up on the 2028 GOP nomination.
Trump, if elected, can be counted on to correct many of the nation’s “critical items list” of problems. But he’ll need to leave a political legacy for his successor if the 45th and 47th presidents are to be viewed as truly transformational in the image of America’s greatest leaders. Therefore, Trump’s running mate is a vitally important part of the puzzle.
It was noteworthy and interesting how several of Trump’s potential running mates showed up in New York City last week to attend his (farce) trial and speak for him afterwards, his surrogates not being subject to the gag order that supposedly restricts Trump. It was an impressive show of loyalty. The Republican “team” is assembling ahead of the fall campaign.
While it doesn’t take much to be qualified to run for vice president, the qualities that are necessary are especially crucial – particularly. The disaster that has been – and continues to be – Kamala Harris highlights the urgency of Donald Trump setting his expectations much higher than mere surface characteristics. The 2024 election – and America’s future – rides on him choosing wisely.