How to become the president of the United States

In the constitution, there are three main restrictions on the qualifications of the president of the United States: first, he must be a citizen born in the United States, that is, he must have the original nationality of the United States, and any naturalized American citizen cannot serve as the president of the United States; Second, you must be at least 35 years old; Third, he has lived in the United States for at least 14 years. The latter two qualification requirements cause fewer legal problems, while the first qualification restriction is more important. This restriction is the only difference in constitutional rights between former American citizens and citizens who become American citizens by naturalization. It is precisely because of this provision that Kissinger, a famous diplomat and international political scholar, has paid an official visit to the Secretary of State of the United States with outstanding achievements and good reputation, but as a naturalized Jewish immigrant, he can not only run for the presidency of the United States, but also succeed. According to the Constitution and laws of the United States, when the President is dismissed, dies or resigns, the Vice President will succeed him. If there is no vice president, the following order of succession is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Provisional Speaker of the Senate, the Secretary of State and other cabinet ministers. Although this is stipulated by law, the opportunity to succeed the president as Secretary of State does not actually exist. However, even if it is Kissinger's turn, it is impossible to be president, because anyone who is president must be qualified to be president, otherwise he may not be president. As for whether an American citizen whose parents are American citizens but born abroad is qualified to be the president of the United States, this is still an unanswered question, because this issue has not been put on the political agenda of the United States. There are two completely different opinions among American scholars: "Yes" and "No". For such questions, the Supreme Court of the United States generally treats them as "political questions" to avoid making judicial decisions, but leaves them to voters to answer, that is, whether voters elect or reject such citizens as presidents is the final interpretation of such constitutional provisions.

Of course, the above three qualifications can only be the most basic and minimum conditions for being a president. Therefore, some Americans think that every American can become president as long as he meets these three conditions, and some even want to run for office seriously. This is obviously naive. In fact, there are many other important conditions to become president of the United States. First of all, he must have the political ability to lead a capitalist superpower like the United States, which means that he must establish political ties with various big consortia, companies and powerful interest groups and act as a spokesperson for their domestic and foreign policies. Only in this way can he get enough financial support, otherwise, no one can afford the huge expenses needed for the election. At the same time, he must establish relations with one of the two major political parties, establish extensive and close contacts and political foundation within the party, and strive to be nominated as the party's presidential candidate. Secondly, he must have the ability to manage the government. Before they set foot on the road to the White House, most presidents in American history had long-term campaign and political experience, and held elected or appointed public offices, such as state legislators, congressmen, governors or other government officials. According to the analysis of some American scholars, "the typical experience of American presidents is that they have been trained in public positions for a long time, and generally begin to hold low-level positions in the American political system when they are in their twenties and thirties", such as county administrative officials, city council members, city prosecutors and so on. [3] Third, in a capitalist country ruled by law like the United States, as a national leader, one must be familiar with the law. President Wilson once said, "I chose politics as my career, and I started my career as a lawyer. I started this career because I knew it would lead to another career. " [4] A considerable number of American presidents have studied law or engaged in the profession of lawyers. According to statistics, among the 4 1 American presidents from Washington to Clinton, 29 have studied law, accounting for 7 1% (in the early days, in addition to attending university law school, there was another way to study law in the United States, and 26 of them got it).

Table 7- 1 Experiences of American Presidents

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Former federal representative retired from Congress.

Governor, member, president, cabinet minister, lawyer's military service time

————————————————————————————————————

Washington ● Continental Army 1783 1789

commander in chief

John adams 1797

Secretary Jefferson 180 1

Madison● Secretary of State ○+ ● 1809

Secretary Monroe 18 17

Secretary of State of john adams ● 1825

Jackson ■●●●● Major General 182 1 1829

Minister of State Van Buren 1837

W H Harrison ●■● Professional maintenance personnel18141841

John tyler ● ■ ●# ● 184 1

Polk ●●●●●●●1845

Zachary Taylor ● Professional soldiers 1847 1849

Fillmore ●●● #●● 1950

Brigadier General Pierce ■●●●●18481853

Secretary of State Buchanan ●●● 1857

Lincoln 186 1

Andrew johnson ● ■ ●# ● 1865

Grant ● Professional Soldiers 1867 1869

Hayes ●●●●●●●●● Honorary Major General 1877

Major General Garfield 188 1

Brigadier general Arthur 188 1

Cleveland ●●●●1885

Benjanmin Harrison ○ ● ● 1889

McGinley ●●●●●●1897

Theodore roosevelt ● ●# ○+ ● 190 1

Taft, Minister of the Army ● 1909

Wilson ●●●●1913

Harding ● 192 1

Coolidge ●●●● #●1923

Hoover Secretary of Commerce 1929

Assistant Secretary of the Navy of franklin roosevelt 1933

Truman ○ ●# ○+ ● 1945

Eisenhower ● Professional Soldiers 1948 1953

Kennedy ■ ● 196 1

Johnson & Johnson ■ ●# ● 1963

Nixon ■●●●●●●●1969

Ford ○ ●# ● ● 1974

Captain Carter 1953 1977

Reagan ●●●●1981

Bush ● Director of CIA ● 1989

Clinton ●●●●1993

————————————————————————————————————

Total (number of people)18 231410 25 ● 27/○14

* Among them, ■ has served as a member of both houses of Congress, ***9 people; ● As a representative, ***8 people; As a senator, ***6 people.

# Four of them were assassinated by the President, four died of illness, 1 one resigned and succeeded the President.

+Studied law, but didn't seek lawyer qualification.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Source: According to the following information: Watson and Thomas: President's Politics, English version1993; William Degregory: The Complete Works of American Presidents, Shanghai People's Publishing House; Harold W. Stanley and Richard G. Niemi, Important Statistics of American Politics, 1994), p. 622.

In the American system, there is also an important professional restriction on the qualifications of the president, that is, the restriction of the principle of civilian government, that is, active servicemen are not allowed to participate in party activities, and in the federal government, no matter members of Congress, presidents and cabinet ministers, or judges of federal courts, they are not allowed to be active servicemen. In this way, active servicemen must retire from active service and resign from the military if they want to enter the National Assembly or serve as president or cabinet minister. This system was formed during the colonial period. For example, Washington, the first president of the United States, joined the Virginia militia when he was young and was promoted to colonel in the war against the French and Indians, which was the highest rank in the colony at that time. 1758 was elected as the representative of the colony, so he quit the militia. In the War of Independence, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. 1783 after the war, he resigned from the military and returned to his farm until he was elected as the first president of the United States. Among the 465,438+0 presidents of the United States, five can be regarded as professional soldiers: william henry harrison, who studied at the Medical College of the University of Pennsylvania, later gave up medicine and joined the army, and his rank rose to at least, but he was discharged as early as 65,438+0,865,438+04, and became president 27 years after his discharge. Zachary Taylor, a "hero" and major general in the US-Mexico War, 1847 retired as a presidential candidate and was elected one year later. Grant graduated from West Point Military Academy, became a hero in the Civil War and was awarded the rank of general. 1867 retired and became the civilian army minister of Lincoln government. 1868 won the presidential election as a Republican candidate. Eisenhower, 19 1 1 entered the west point military academy and has been serving in the army since graduation. He served as commander-in-chief of the European Allied Forces in World War II and was awarded the title of five-star general. 1948 retired and served as president of Columbia University for two years; 1950 at the invitation of president Truman, he resumed active service and became commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the north Atlantic treaty organization; 1952 retired from active service, accepted the nomination of * * * and the party's presidential candidate, and was elected president. Carter, 1946 graduated from the United States Naval Academy and served in the navy. Although he had hoped to become a professional naval officer, he resigned from the army on 1953 because of his father's death and returned to his hometown to run a farm and peanut wholesale company. He was the governor of Georgia in 197 1-75 and 1976. Therefore, in fact, only Taylor, Grant and Eisenhower became presidential candidates immediately after retiring from active service. Together with Jackson, a war "hero" from non-professional soldiers, they won the election to a great extent by virtue of the prestige formed in the war. In addition to these professional soldiers, there are 22 people who served in the army (19th century, and some became senior generals in the war, such as Jackson), but by the time they ran for the presidency, they had retired for many years, and most of them had served as members of parliament or administrative officials in the civilian government.