Should There Be More Stringent Qualifications For Office?

This last Presidential election has brought about many interesting questions, including one that has been asked in many ways, “Who is qualified for office, and what should those qualifications be?” The questions continue to be asked as the whole nation appears to be in debate over the qualification of Caroline Kennedy to serve in the Senate as a replacement for Hillary Clinton.
The Constitution itself only has minimal qualifications listed for any national office. For President:

“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.”

As for qualification to serve in Congress:

“No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state in which he shall be chosen.”

Critics of both President Elect Obama and potential Senate appointee Kennedy have argued that neither has the experience for the office they aspire to. However, as evidenced by the Constitution, there are no experience requirements for either position. States do not make any additional requirements to serve in national offices, but the voters do, and these requirements have a huge range.

For those seeking national office, or a higher office in the event the candidate is already serving in some legislative capacity, or has been in an office previously, it is relatively easy for one to discover and review the candidate’s history. Depending on the ideology of the voter, this record will either qualify or disqualify the candidate.

But voters can never really be put into a box. You can never depend on them to vote certain ways. While most have certain qualifications in mind for their candidate, they often rationalize points to legitimize their selection. There will always be those who vote according to party once the primaries are over and the final selection is on us. Others are pretty much one issue voters. The primary issues for these voters tend to be abortion, war or immigration… more specifically, illegal immigration.

This last Presidential election brought about a couple new categories for one issue voters, race and gender. Many voters cast their ballot for either Obama or Hillary because of these. This is only wrong if you are among those who do not believe race or gender is or should be a qualification to hold office. To those whom this matters, it is right and they will argue all day long about why it is important, why it matters.

Obama’s resume, while rather thin, did not matter to those who voted for him, but experience did matter when it came to the Republican nominee for Vice-President. Obama supporters stated that Sara Palin’s short time in the Alaskan Governor’s office was not long enough to qualify her to back up John McCain while Palin supporters pointed out that she had more experience than did Obama who was seeking the higher office.

Some have argued that we should revamp the Constitutional requirements for public office to outline minimal qualifications for candidates for various offices. There is some merit to this, and it would surly distract the legislators for quite a while as they debate what those qualifications should be, but I would make the argument against this. The debate has already been heard at least once, when our founding fathers were setting the requirements in the first place. I have come to the same conclusions.

The voters are the ones who need to make the decision as to who will represent them. One voter’s requirements are not the same as another’s. In fact, if you polled 1000 voters as to what their requirements for office might be, I would be willing to bet you get almost a thousand different answers. In other words, you will never get the voters to agree to a short list of minimum qualifications, and since they are the ultimate authority as to who serves in most cases, any laws limiting the voter’s choice of candidate would undermine the very freedoms this country is founded on and would be unconstitutional.