What does the Constitution say about who is allowed to be president? And why is the answer to that question still a little unclear?
Brady Carlson, host of All Things Considered at Wisconsin Public Radio and author of Dead Presidents. explains the formal and informal rules that govern who is allowed to become Commander-in-Chief.
Transcript
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:03] Nick, have you ever wanted to run for president?
Nick Capodice [00:00:05] Absolutely not.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:06] I think the very fact that I don't know how to tweet about anything is reason enough. You know, I can't be like I'm doing this, everybody, because that feels too self-promotional to me. It grosses me out, which is ridiculous. So I could I couldn't be a politician of any kind.
Archival: [00:00:24] If this is what the people want, then I will do that.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:30] Let's [00:00:30] just be straight about it. Are you considering running for president yourself?
Archival: [00:00:34] I want everybody to be absolutely clear. I'm not running for vice president. I'm running for president of the United States of America. I'm running.
Archival: [00:00:42] For president. I'm running for president. I'm running for president.
Archival: [00:00:45] I am running for president.
Archival: [00:00:46] I am running for president.
[00:00:48] Of the United.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:56] You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: [00:00:58] I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:59] And today [00:01:00] we are talking about who gets to run for president and who doesn't.
Archival: [00:01:05] You just woke up this morning and suddenly decided to run for president.
Archival: [00:01:09] No, no, I just thought.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:18] So there are three qualifications a person has to meet to run for president. Now, two are pretty straightforward. One is not, and absolutely none of them have anything to do with [00:01:30] political experience, leadership abilities, or an affinity for oval shaped offices.
Brady Carlson: [00:01:36] The first one is age. You have to be 35 years or older, and that is when you take office. You can still be 34 on Election Day as long as your birthday's coming up.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:46] This is Brady Carlson. He's the All Things Considered host at Wisconsin Public Radio and the author of Dead Presidents An American Adventure into the Strange Deaths and Surprising Afterlives of Our Nation's Leaders.
Nick Capodice: [00:01:59] Okay, Rule [00:02:00] number one, you have to be at least 35 years old. Got it. What's the second rule?
Brady Carlson: [00:02:04] The second is a residency requirement that says you have to be an inhabitant of the United States for 14 years or more. This is mostly a carryover from the early days of the country. They didn't want someone who maybe lived in the UK up until, you know, the Constitution was ratified, suddenly taking a boat trip across the Atlantic Ocean and then saying, Hey guys, I'm here. I'm going to be your [00:02:30] new president. That said, though, there have been some questions about what exactly it means to be an inhabitant because it's not entirely spelled out in the Constitution. It says you have to be an inhabitant for 14 years. But does that mean 14 years in a row? Does that mean 14 years over the course of your life? And just the word inhabitant itself can be interpreted in different ways. Does that mean that you're physically in the United States for up to 14 years, or does it mean that you maintain a domicile like you [00:03:00] have a physical mailing address?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:01] For example, some of our former presidents were in the military and served overseas. That service does count toward the 14 years of inhabitant sea.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:11] But what if you were just working abroad, not as part of the military or you were living outside the U.S. for a stretch of time for some other reason?
Brady Carlson: [00:03:18] There was a question in the 20th century about Herbert Hoover.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:22] Hoover was a mining engineer. He studied geology in college and worked all over the world inspecting mines to figure out [00:03:30] if they were good investments or not.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:32] Hmm.
Brady Carlson: [00:03:32] He had worked overseas before he was elected president, and it was within that 14 year window. So if inhabitant meant 14 straight years of being in the United States ahead of being elected, he might have not been eligible to be president. That's obviously not what happened, though.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:47] The requirement of living in the United States for 14 years turns out to be less significant and controversial than the final requirement to run for president, which has to do with citizenship.
Brady Carlson: [00:04:00] Number [00:04:00] three is the most complicated qualification. So I'm just going to read it right out of the Constitution. 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. What it means to be a natural born citizen is something that the courts have not entirely weighed in on. So it is definitely up to interpretation.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:23] So you can't run for president if you weren't a U.S. citizen from the very moment you were born. Even if you became [00:04:30] a U.S. citizen later in life.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:31] That's right. But the term, quote, natural born gets even more complicated because you don't have to have been born on U.S. soil to be considered a U.S. citizen from birth. You can be born a U.S. citizen if you were born abroad, so long as at least one of your parents is a US citizen. And that parent has also spent time living in the United States. And there have been several presidential candidates over the years who were born outside the United States and had their qualifications [00:05:00] for presidency called into question. Take Senator Ted Cruz, for example. He ran for president in 2016.
Archival: [00:05:07] Jobs, Freedom. Security. Cruz. I'm Ted Cruz and I approve this message.
Brady Carlson: [00:05:14] I remember being at a primary event that he had in New Hampshire during the 2016 campaign, and a guy in the audience put it to him point blank. He said, Ted Cruz, you were born in Canada. To me, a person born in Canada is not a natural born citizen of the United States, and therefore you're not eligible to be president. [00:05:30] So here's the back story. Ted Cruz was born in Canada. His mother was born in Delaware. So she was an American born person. His father was born in Cuba. At that point, he was not a citizen of the United States, but he is now. They were working in Canada at the time. And so Ted Cruz said, by virtue of having a mother who was an American citizen, he was a natural born American. And the quote he gave was, I have never breathed a.
Archival: [00:05:54] Breath of air on this planet when I was not a US citizen. It was the act of being born that [00:06:00] made me a US citizen. So under the law, the question is clear. There will still be some who try to work political mischief on it. But as a legal matter, this is clear and straightforward.
Brady Carlson: [00:06:10] Ultimately, it's a question that can be decided in the courts. Now, that's one that hasn't totally been decided in the courts. In Ted Cruz's case, there were several legal challenges to his candidacy. Most of those were turned away on procedural grounds. A few declared that basically that his explanation was good enough. But unless someone files [00:06:30] a lawsuit against you, basically your word is good enough to get you qualified. But there have been other challenges over the years. John McCain, in fact, when he ran for president, faced some legal challenges because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. He wasn't born in a state. Mitt Romney's dad, George Romney, when he ran for president in the 1960s, he was born in Mexico to American parents and they both faced these same kinds of questions.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:53] One example, of course, is the challenge to former President Barack Obama's qualifications before and during his presidency. [00:07:00] However, that conspiracy theory promoted by his successor, former President Donald Trump, was not really about the nature of Obama's citizenship, but rather the legitimacy of his birth certificate in the first place, which Trump called forgery, and about Obama's dual British and American citizenship. But when it comes to the question of whether someone qualifies as a quote unquote natural born citizen, if they were born outside the United States, to a parent who is a citizen, Ted [00:07:30] Cruz is not alone.
Brady Carlson: [00:07:31] Now, like I said, the U.S. Supreme Court hasn't taken this up. So the broad understanding up to this point is essentially, if you're born in the United States, you're a natural born citizen under the birthright citizenship in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, if you're born in some other part of the world, But one of your parents, not both, but one of your parents is an American citizen, then you're still considered a natural born citizen. My favorite story is the one when Chester [00:08:00] Arthur became president, he was vice president under James Garfield and then moved up after Garfield died. He was born in a rural Vermont, and some of his political enemies started a whisper campaign that maybe he was actually born in southern Canada rather than rural Vermont. Obviously, that didn't go too far either. But it's not a new thing for people to speak of their political opponents as the other, or maybe not quite as American as other people are.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:32] Now [00:08:30] this brings us to U.S. territories. We have 14 territories, but only five have people living there Puerto Rico, Guam, the US, Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands with the exception of American Samoa. If you were born in a US territory, you are a US citizen. American Samoans are considered American nationals, meaning they can live on [00:09:00] American land indefinitely and can apply for citizenship.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:04] But people living in US territories aren't allowed to vote in federal elections. Right?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:08] Right. Citizens and territories can only elect a non-voting representative in Congress and they don't get to vote for president, though they can still participate in primaries and caucuses. So though someone living in a US territory may be a citizen, they don't even get to vote for president. However, as far as we can tell, [00:09:30] they can still run for president because they are by definition, still natural born citizens.
Archival: [00:09:38] I'm asking you to stand with me to build a movement.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:42] In 2019, we did have a presidential candidate who was born in American Samoa, Tulsi Gabbard of Freedom, justice, equality and opportunity for all. But her parents were U.S. citizens. So this question of whether she would have been qualified because [00:10:00] of her birth in American Samoa wasn't really relevant, and she was in a similar position to those other presidential candidates who had been born outside of the US.
Nick Capodice: [00:10:08] Has there been any push to change any of those requirements, for example, to allow people who gain citizenship later in life to run for president? Because there's got to be millions of people in the US who can't run for president, even though the US citizens because they aren't, quote, natural born citizens. Under the current interpretation.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:28] In actual fact, a 2019 [00:10:30] study estimated that there were as many as 20 million adults who wouldn't be qualified to run for president because they were naturalized citizens rather than citizens from birth. Now, some scholars have argued that the natural born citizen rule could be considered discrimination based on someone's national origin under the Fifth Amendment. But that argument hasn't gotten much traction at this point.
Nick Capodice: [00:10:53] Well, what about a constitutional amendment, one that wouldn't restrict someone from running if they got citizenship later in life? [00:11:00] Has that ever happened? Has that been proposed?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:01] Yeah. So there have been a few proposed constitutional amendments like that, usually inspired by specific individuals who are ineligible to run for president. Take Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. Now, Kissinger, who was German born, was the secretary of state in the Nixon administration. And his popularity during the chaos of that time made some people start to think of him as potential presidential material, except, of course, [00:11:30] for the fact that he was a naturalized citizen.
Archival: [00:11:33] Do you think he's a political problem in the election? Do you think he is an issue? Not at all. He may have been a problem in the primary leading up to the convention, but the broad consensus.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:50] Among this led New York Congressman Jonathan Bingham, to propose an amendment that would allow naturalized citizens to run for president. There was also more recently, [00:12:00] a proposed amendment by Senator Orrin Hatch, sometimes called the Arnold Amendment because it was widely considered to be tied to establishing eligibility for Austrian born former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for president.
Brady Carlson: [00:12:13] I have, in fact, perused some newsreels from the Schwarzenegger library. And that time that you took that car.
Archival: [00:12:18] Oh, that Schwarzenegger library.
Archival: [00:12:21] Yes, the Schwarzenegger Presidential library. Wasn't he an actor when.
Archival: [00:12:26] He was president?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:29] So far, [00:12:30] no amendment has gotten enough traction to change that requirement so that naturalized citizens can run for president.
Nick Capodice: [00:12:37] Okay. Let me run this all back to you. You can only run for president if you're at least 35 years old, if you've lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years and you are a, quote unquote, natural born citizen, a term that's still up for debate, but once you actually get the job. Hannah, I'm wondering about what it takes to keep it after that first term, because as we've seen [00:13:00] in our most recent election, just because you can be president for two terms, that doesn't mean your party and the public will support your reelection.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:07] You know, Brady's got some great high drama stories about this very thing. And we will talk about the performance review of the tops, all performance reviews. The reelection of an incumbent right after this.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:20] But first, we are here to remind you not of the mess you made when you.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:24] And we're here.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:25] To remind you.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:27] But first, Hannah and I just want to remind you [00:13:30] that there are no. Qualifications whatsoever you must possess to subscribe to our newsletter, Extra Credit. It's fun. It's full of facts and fancy. It comes out every two weeks and you can do it at our website, civics101podcast.org. We're back. This is Civics 101. We're talking about running for president. Hannah, we have seen from as recently as the 2020 election that the incumbent president doesn't automatically [00:14:00] get reelected. But my question is, does that incumbent automatically get nominated by their party to run for a second term? Or could the party decide, you know what, Actually, we didn't really like you and what you did. So we're going to try this with someone new.
Brady Carlson: [00:14:15] No guarantees. You got to earn it. And in fact, nobody is a better case study for that than New Hampshire's only president, Franklin Pierce. He won election in 1852. And while it was common [00:14:30] in those days for people to serve just one term, he had his eye on reelection. The only problem was he had made himself very unpopular in his own party. And so when the 1856 Democratic Party convention came around, he actually lost the nomination to another Democrat, James Buchanan.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:46] Pierce was an anti abolitionist, northern Democrat, and a lot of his decisions were basically like throwing lighter fluid on the political fire that eventually became the Civil War, including undoing the Missouri compromise by letting the [00:15:00] newly formed territories of Kansas and Nebraska decide by popular vote if they would allow enslavement. The resulting political conflict in Kansas was so violent that it came to be called Bleeding Kansas.
Brady Carlson: [00:15:12] He sought the nomination. He wanted to get a second term and they said thanks, but no thanks.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:17] Buchanan did eventually go on to win the election, but usually if an incumbent decides to run for reelection, their chances of getting the nomination are pretty good.
Brady Carlson: [00:15:27] So it's actually fairly common in U.S. history [00:15:30] for incumbent presidents to face strong primary challenges. The incumbents usually win against those challenges. A great example of that was in 1976. That was when Gerald Ford was running for a full term, and he faced a very serious challenge in the Republican primary from former California Governor Ronald Reagan. They were separated by just a handful of delegates. Reagan very much could have won that nomination. But Ford was able to hold on.
Archival: [00:16:00] Let [00:16:00] me say this from the bottom of my heart. After the scrimmages of the past few months, it really feels good to have Ron Reagan on the same side of the line.
Nick Capodice: [00:16:24] If Franklin Pierce was the exception to the norm, and incumbents who want to run for reelection usually [00:16:30] get nominated, why do we so often see those challengers from the same party? And I'm thinking of 2020 when there were three other challengers to President Donald Trump and the primary. Now, none of them did. Well, sure, but they still ran.
Brady Carlson: [00:16:45] Because in politics, the usual rules for things don't always apply. In some ways, you can actually win by losing. An example of that was in 1992, when President George H.W. Bush was running for a second term and he faced a primary challenge from conservative commentator Pat [00:17:00] Buchanan. Now, Pat Buchanan wasn't going to win that race. He wasn't in a position to take the nomination away from a sitting president, but he was able to put up a strong enough showing, especially in the New Hampshire primary, that he was able to change the course of the Republican platform.
Archival: [00:17:16] With some polls showing him slipping and real concern about Tuesday's turnout. George Bush pulled out all the stops today.
Archival: [00:17:23] So let me introduce you, a supporter and a great friend of mine, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Archival: [00:17:29] To the message [00:17:30] to Pat Buchanan.
Archival: [00:17:31] Hasta la vista, baby.
Archival: [00:17:32] Thank you.
Brady Carlson: [00:17:35] He really wanted to have more socially conservative language in that platform and was able to get some of that into the party platform for the year.
Archival: [00:17:44] Mr. Bush refuses to utter Buchanan's name, but claims outrage over his negative tactics, having apparently forgotten how helpful his own slashing ads were in winning here four years ago.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:56] Essentially, Pat Buchanan criticized President Bush for not being conservative [00:18:00] enough in some of his policies. For example, he called out the president for a proposed tax hike that was in direct opposition to Bush's famous read my lips, no new taxes line. Buchanan's success in the New Hampshire primary and then his popularity elsewhere in the country meant that when President Bush was eventually renominated as the Republican candidate, the platform he was running on and the promises he was making were more conservative.
Brady Carlson: [00:18:26] Another example of that was in 1968, when Lyndon Johnson [00:18:30] was looking to win another term. But Vietnam was a very controversial issue at the time, and some anti-war Democrats ran against him in the New Hampshire primary and actually did well enough that they convinced Johnson he couldn't win another term. So he actually got out of the race, which is kind of what they were aiming for.
Archival: [00:18:47] By any political measure, President Johnson has suffered a major psychological setback in New Hampshire. Accordingly, I shall not seek and [00:19:00] I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.
Brady Carlson: [00:19:07] All of that said, though, once an incumbent gets into the general election, assuming that they do fend off all those primary challengers, they tend to do very well. So incumbency is not a universal thing, but it is a very powerful thing. Incumbents have a better shot than, say, a schlep like me.
Nick Capodice: [00:19:31] Well, [00:19:30] that is a lot on running for president here on Civics 101. Today's episode was written and produced by Christina Phillips with help from Hannah McCarthy. Our staff includes Jacqui Fulton and Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. Music In this episode by OTE, Jahzzar, Silver Maple, Mr. Smith, Ketsa, MindMe, Lucas Pittman, Chris Shards, Superintendent McCupcakes and Bomull. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR New Hampshire Public Radio. [00:20:00]
Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:02] And Austrian born Arnold Schwarzenegger. And Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger Oh, how can I say Schwarzenegger? Schwarzenegger. Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for president.
Nick Capodice: [00:20:23] Just say Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for president.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:25] Arnold Schwarzenegger. What do I say?
Nick Capodice: [00:20:28] Schwarzenegger. It's Schwartz, Schwarzenegger. [00:20:30]
Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:31] Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for president.
Nick Capodice: [00:20:33] One more time.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:34] Oh, my God.