Should the eligibility requirements for the position of POTUS be increased?

Personally I do not think anything has to change. That “bar” is set where it is at so most anyone who is a legal US citizen over 35 can become President. How great is that?!! Once you meets these “low bar” qualifications, said candidate will then have to pass muster in the highest form of scrutiny and that is the court of public opinion. If there is to be anything that is to be changed with regards to a Presidential election is 2 things, campaign reform and news reporting standards. We are in the advent of a new dynamic with information manipulation in that fake news and deep fake videos are capable of being indistinguishable by the average voter and if everything stays the same, fake news and fake videos will become the norm and we the voters are left tremendously vulnerable to bullshit. I want my President elected on his real merits and blemishes not what the other side party wants to portray to sway and influence our elections.

Plus IF you really think about it, anything the President says and does is carefully scripted by the members of their Cabinet and of course Congress (I used to believe) would be a secondary line of checks and balances. Then we always have our Constitution to keep matters in line with our nations legacy.

Wow! @Vignette what a remarkable answer! Love what you said man!

I would only add one more requirement:
– must survive one “purge” month, during which all secret service, police, and other forms of protection, including privately hired security firms or mercenaries, is suspended, and all assassination attempts, successful or not, by any imaginable means and methods, are legal and unimpeded.

No.

But the standard for a seat in the legislature clearly needs to be looked at.

Anyway, good luck changing the Constitution these days.

Having a bankruptcy in the past 10 years on your credit history should be disqualifying. It is for most jobs that pay what the POTUS pays.

As a bare minimum an associates degree is required for many of the most basic jobs.
Most professionals like doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, economists, mathematicians, etc have advanced degrees as a minimum: MS, PhD.
Shouldn’t our leaders be held to the same standard? They don’t need to have a PhD in political science but they should have enough basic knowledge to know basic high school social studies. Should they know how to read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Shouldn’t they know that Iran and Iraq are different countries?
Shouldn’t they know how to read and write English at a 7th grade level or above?

@gorillapaws brings up a good point. A recent bankruptcy is enough to disqualify an individual from many professional positions. Why? There is a chance they might make decisions and policies that are not in the company’s best interest but rather benefit only the individual.

It’s good enough. But if you wanted to make it more restrictive, have the person be able to pass a test on current events, and pass a certain level for IQ.

If you tighten the educational requirements, you’re preventing those less fortunate to afford those degrees the chance at becoming President. The President represents the people. Not the educated and rich only.

@LuckyGuy I will have to respectfully disagree on both points. We the People (at least I) enjoy/prefer to be represented by elected officials who actually are representative of my own interests (niceties included). That said I would like to think so would everyone else. Back when I was broke taking any form of work I could, I would want to be represented by someone with a similar background and work history where a degree or pedigree meant little to me. What mattered then and today is results. Some of the most incompetent people I have met in my life have masters and PHD’s. A pedigree degree does not insulate us from electing an idiot.

Bankruptcy is not a crime, it is a legal course of action that protects AND enables one to navigate the rough choppy waters of insolvency that can happen to anyone at anytime. Thousands of individuals file for bankruptcy every year because of things like a burdensome illness, death of a main provider, government intervention that slashes a business’s ability to compete on the stage they once thrived on. Think farmers whose output relied on China and are being challenged by the current tariffs. Anyway, lots of really good leaders would be denied the opportunity to serve as elected officials or our President if you implemented that caveat. Plus putting in such provocative exclusions will only invite people to further game the system in order to close an unprofitable venture without filing for bankruptcy. IMHO your Utopian form of election requirements would severely limit who we might want to be our President. I will side with our Founders every step of the way who brilliantly formed and created our Constitution.

How about “appointed by God” like you know, KINGS.

There is very good reason why there were not enough qualifications to eliminate eighty pecent of the population.

Here are some requirements, nobody who didn’t graduate from private school

No gays

No women

No relatives of past presidents

No smokers

No drinkers

No lawyers

No artists

No fat people

No news reporters

No farmer

No meat eaters

No man with a foreign accent

No Jews

No man with relatives who work for ABC or its affiliates

No man with calloused hands

No man with type AB blood

No man who has ever watched Oprah’s show

No man who can’t play a musical instrument

No man who has been divorced

No

I’m siding with @LuckyGuy on this. Most professions requiring sound judgement, skill, knowledge and integrity have a rather high bar for entry and for good reason. The office of the president should be no different. In fact, it should have at minimum what is outlined as a requirement to be a FSO.

I want any professional working for me – including my elected representative to be the smartest, most capable person in the room. They should have integrity and not be bothered by their own economic issues.
Recent Bankruptcy, drug use, mental illness, conflict of interest cases, felonies disqualify individuals from many professional jobs already.
I don’t want the leader of the free world to be representative of the homogeneous mix of the citizenry. I want that person to be an expert in economics, foreign policy as well as the Constitution and the operation of the government.

Including bankruptcy and mental illness seems like it could rule out high numbers of potentially excellent candidates. I believe that’s painting with too broad a brush. It would include anyone who’s ever been diagnosed with depression (17.3 million in 2017) or gone through a major illness that caused insane medical bills.

The point of my post above illustrates how posing restrictions could go. Where do we draw the line? Who would we trust with making a list of restrictions?

How many companies do we know of which has not been under scrutiny for the personal/professional issues we find undesirable? How many have simply gone undetected? Wasn’t Enron considered spotless, right up to disappearing?
Do we want someone with a big heart who never broke a rule? Is someone like that going to let their feelings get in the way of hard decisions? If we hire someone able to bury emotion and make the hard decisions, do we feel like our country is under control of a robot?

I guarantee, if we posed more restrictions, we would resent the sort of candidates we end up with, if any.

What say we rewrite the Constitution completely. Our elections would no longer come from the public at large. The ballots would consist of high ranking members of the top companies of the time. No backing out. Where does that put us? No longer would we be a democracy.
I understand people are frustrated, but no matter who gets elected, all the people who voted for someone else will be disappointed.

Abe Lincoln suffered depression. That was no secret. To get media to portray him as he chose he owned newspapers. He was not the only one to do that.

President Roosevelt hid his polio, so people would believe him strong and healthy. We have presidents all the way back with issues and secrets.

The problem is not who we have to choose from. The problem is we are scrutinizing too closely. It is an impossible realm we ask for already. However, if we did choose to impose more restrictions, the entire process would paralyze our government and cause collapse.

Or having a whack job dictator for President would paralyze a government and cause collapse.

Like Crisis in Venezuela