Should We Amend the Constitution to Demand Top Leaders Be More Experienced?
As we endure another presidential election, I find myself wondering about how we select our top leader.
No one would board an airliner whose pilot had no previous flying experience.
We wouldn't consult a "doctor" who had never attended medical school and had no experience treating physical or mental illnesses.
Yet as we discovered in 2016, a lack of political experience does not preclude nomination by a major party and installation in the White House.
In few other countries, democratic or undemocratic, can individuals with no leadership experience become the top leader.
In constitutional democracies like the United Kingdom, for example, the top leaders are the monarch, as head of state, and the prime minister, head of government.
Future monarchs are brought up in royal families and pick up relevant information at the dinner table from their earliest years.
They are carefully educated so they will know what they need to do the job. And since the monarch's job is entirely ceremonial, lack of preparation would not be fatal, in any event.
The prime minister makes the important policy decisions.
To become prime minister, one must get elected to Parliament and serve for many years, get into the Cabinet, and finally get elected prime minister by colleagues who know them personally and not just through images projected through the mass media.
In one-party dictatorships, the top leader must rise through the ranks of the ruling party, gradually gaining experience.
Mikhail Gorbachev, for example, was Communist Party boss (sort of like an American state governor) in an important region, then was brought to Moscow to assume broader responsibilities.
The ruling Politburo co-opted him into its ranks, and then picked him as the top leader when the previous leader, Konstantin Chernenko, died.
In the United States presidents have usually had considerable leadership experience.
As my 1981 college textbook reported, "There are only a few strategic positions from which a successful presidential campaign can be launched, if American history is any guide:
- "The governorship (current or recent) of a large state (Franklin Roosevelt, New York; Jimmy Carter (Georgia)
- "The U.S. Senate (John F. Kennedy)
- "A distinguished military career culminating in a successful war (Dwight D. Eisenhower)
- "The Cabinet (Herbert Hoover)
- "The vice presidency (current or recent) (Richard Nixon)
- "The presidency itself (Harry Truman, Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon)."
My 1981 textbook failed to notice the possibility of someone like Donald Trump winning our highest office without falling into any of the above categories.
But there was nothing in the Constitution, written long before radio, television, and social media, which made this impossible.
Of course not all things that are legally possible are politically possible. Until the election of John F. Kennedy, in 1960, for example, it was impossible for a Catholic to become president.
And until 2016 I assumed that election of a candidate with absolutely no political experience would always be impossible. I thought that voters would not want to take a chance on an inexperienced leader any more than they would fly with an inexperienced pilot.
I was, not for the first time in my life, spectacularly wrong.
The Constitution does not allow election of a president who is less than 35 years of age., assuring that candidates have a certain level of maturity.
Voters are not free to elect a 25-year-old, no matter how attractive he or she might be.
Although we survived Trump's presidency and as a candidate this year he is no longer inexperienced, we might not be so lucky if our national airliner were once again flown by an inexperienced pilot.
Perhaps we should amend the Constitution to require a certain amount of political leadership experience before anyone can run for the presidency. One approach might be to limit eligibility to governors or former governors.
Paul F. deLespinasse is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science at Adrian College. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1966 and has been a National Merit Scholar, an NDEA Fellow, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and a Fellow in Law and Political Science at the Harvard Law School. His college textbook, "Thinking About Politics: American Government in Associational Perspective," was published in 1981. His most recent book is "The Case of the Racist Choir Conductor: Struggling With America's Original Sin." His columns have appeared in newspapers in Michigan, Oregon and elsewhere. Read more of his reports — Click Here Now.