It's interesting how people create prerequisites for running for President.

So-n-so 'hasn't been a Senator long enough'. Oh really? Well out of the 42 people who have been president, only two were Senators.

Some seem to think you need to be a veteran, but only 25 presidents served in the military, 6 of them were professional soldiers. Which means 17 were civilians.

Some believe you need to have a college education. Interesting since 31 presidents received sheepskins, and 2 had only some cpllege education.

Well, you have to be a Mayor. Hmmmm, only 3 were Mayors.

Ok then, Governor. Well only 17 were governors, and only 8 went straight to the White House.

Well you have to be a professional politician. Tell that to Taylor, Grant, Hoover and Eisenhower.

No, you must be a natural born citizen, and you shall not be younger than 35 (and a resident within the United States for the last 14 years). But after this primary season I think you need to have thick skin.

Thank you, Detroit Free Press.

Reid and Pelosi say it'll be over next week.

I'll take a look, thanks. I heard something similar today on the radio.

Knowing a little bit about how the Government is run would be a start.

We have had a trainee for the last 8 years.We do not need another one.

The way gov't has been run for some time has been bad for the country. Maybe a trainee would show people how it should be done.

That's not an endorsement for any of the "big 3". Maybe we'll get a knight in shining armor that appears on the horizon to save us all. In that case he could be green as grass if he could slay enough of the old dragons.

Most of the Presidents throughout early US history were 'trainees'.

They seem to have generally done OK...

Contrary to some here, Obama's lack of experience is one of the things I do NOT hold against him. I'll grant that he's inexperienced, but not that it's particularly important.

I'm in agreement with you, Boss. Experience can be over-played as we've seem this year. No one person is going to have experience in every area of government and assumes the winning candidate lacks the intelligence to surround themselves with people with the knowledge and expertise needed.

Obviously the only legal qualifications are those listed in the Constitution. That would bar me from office (I'm not yet 35), but most of those in this forum would be legally qualified. However, given the importance of the role, most of us expect much more.

If we needed brain surgery to survive, we would presumably want to choose a doctor with some experience with surgery -- preferably more than a few years of experience, and preferably with a great success rate and sterling academic credentials. Heck, even if we were having our house worked on, we'd want a contractor with a lot of relevant experience. Why should we expect anything less with a role as crucial as president of the world's most powerful nation?

Here are the qualifications I'd like to see, with parenthetical comments:

1) High intelligence (This is tough to gauge in this setting, but academic successes, and verbal and debating skills can give you a sense of a candidate's intelligence).

2) Tempermental fitness (You don't want a hot-head with his finger on the button, but you also don't want someone so unsure of himself that he's paralyzed when action is called for. Ideally, you have a very curious person, who is open-minded and even-tempered, a person who doesn't come apart under stress, humble enough to defer to experts on technical questions, but secure enough to be a natural leader. You also want a detail-oriented workaholic).

3) Ample experience in high elected office (Ideally, that would mean Senator, Governor, or VP... but a House member or Mayor of a sufficiently large city would be good, with sufficient extra years. Using the rule of thumb that it takes seven years to master a skill, when you're fanatically diligent about it, someone with seven or more years of experience in high elected office would be preferable).

4) Ample experience in an executive role (Ideally that would mean VP or Governor, but it could also be Sec. of State, Presidential Chief of Staff, four-star military commander, mayor, or at least some lesser role within an administration, or an executive position in business. Once again, seven or more years would be ideal).

5) Some preparation for the role of Commander in Chief. (Ideally that would mean lots of experience as a senior military officer, but could also include working as a governor with authority over the National Guard, work in the DoD or defense industry, work as a civilian military analyst, or committee positions overseeing the military, in the House or Senate).

6) Great skills as a communicator (Success as president requires convincing the people that your ideas are good ones, and the ability to communicate effectively is key for that).

7) Knowledge about the rest of the world (An ideal President would have spent a lot of years abroad, studying or working or serving as an ambassador, and would have extensive experience traveling. He or she would be multilingual and would have a talent for communicating an American perspective, in a positive manner, to a foreign audience).

Now, my thoughts on how the three candidates stack up on those grounds:

1) High intelligence: This is the toughest to say, but my guess would be that Obama is the smartest, followed by Clinton, followed by McCain. McCain's miserable academic experience at the Naval Academy isn't terribly inspiring, whereas Obama and Clinton both have outstanding academic records. Between Clinton and Obama, Clinton's the clearly superior debater, but something about Obama's superior academic record and his manner of speaking suggests to me he may be smarter than her.

2) Tempermental fitness: I'd say Clinton comes in first here, based on how ridiculously even-tempered she's been when facing a media lynching throughout the campaign. She also strikes me as open-minded, detail-oriented, and hard working. Obama would come next. He seems to have a very natural leadership style and no obvious tempermental warning signs. McCain would come in a distant last place, based on his terrible temper.

3) Ample experience in high elected office: McCain is far and away the most impressive here. Clinton would be next. Obama kind of embarrasses himself on this one.

4) Ample experience in an executive role: I'd put McCain and Clinton in a tie here, based on his executive role as a military officer, and her important role within the Clinton administration. I'm unaware of any executive-style experience for Obama.

5) Commander in Chief preparation: McCain is far and away the most qualified, based both on his military career and his many years taking a leadership role in the Senate on military issues. Clinton would be a distant second, based on having also served on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

6) Great skills as a communicator: Obama would come in first on this one, Clinton second, and McCain close behind her.

7) Knowledge about the rest of the world: I'm not sure here. Clinton has tons of experience traveling the world as an unofficial ambassador as First Lady, so I'd probably put her first. Obama would be a close second, based on his own personal background living abroad. McCain's ages in the Senate probably have involved enough traveling that he is pretty familiar witht he rest of the world, but I'd still expect him to place third here.

I don't buy that argument. Granted, many early Presidents were "trainees." But the early federal government was vastly simpler than today's government, and the size of the country vastly smaller. Running an isolationist, agrarian nation with 5 million citizens and a weak federal government is a very different matter than running the leading nation in the world, with its 300 million citizens, $13 trillion economy, and vast federal bureaucracy. Having a trainee drive you around in a horse and buggy is very different than having a trainee fly you around in a 747.

I feel your argument is flawed because a President does NOT have to know all the things you suggest.

A President only has to have one real skill, outside of effective communication (I agree with you on that).

They have to be able to pick qualified and experienced advisors (and have enough sense to listen to them...)

Boss, the one component I'd add to your assessment is common sense, the ability to think logically and calmly. We could easily point to experience and see how badly experience has served us.

I would agree with that, although it's hard to actually see if someone has it or not until a crisis event occurs...

The ability to pick good people for one's team has a lot to do with experience. To put it in greatly simplified terms, picture the ultimate "fantasy draft" in football. All the players get dumped back into a pool, and then 32 people take turns drafting players to fill out 32 teams, to compete for the season.

Granted, raw intelligence and diligence will factor into who does the best job in assembling a team. But experience will also be a huge factor. If one guy was a an arena-league manager who only has two or three years of experience with NFL players, that's going to hurt his ability to out-pick someone else who has stronger NFL experience. The person who has seen what works and what doesn't, first hand, for years, is going to do well. The person who knows who the good leaders are and who the clubhouse cancers are, who works well together and who will lack chemistry, etc., will have a big advantage.

I'd expect a high correlation between the experience of the managers and the ultimate performance of the teams they drafted. Less experienced managers would likely be relying more heavily on statistics and conventional wisdom, which would be particularly unhelpful in the trenches, where the games are really won or lost. The gaps between experience and inexperience would get even more pronounced if they also picked coaches and assistant coaches and made strategic decisions about offenses and defenses (4-3 or 3-4?).

I'd expect a smart, hard-working amateur to get his hat handed to him by a much more experienced guy nearly every time. He just wouldn't have the experience to know which "good people" to surround himself with. If that's true with a relatively simplistic challenge like assembling a winning NFL squad, how much more true must it be for running the most complicated country on Earth?

I just think back to the Clinton and Bush administrations. Clinton made a lot of dumb mistakes early on, largely due to inexperience. He set the wrong priorities, and picked some of the wrong people. Robert Reich, for example, is a brilliant guy with dazzling credentials, but he wasn't the right man for the job. Clinton was smart enough and open-minded enough that he adapted quickly, and by 1996 his administration was hitting on all cylinders, but it shows that mere intelligence isn't enough to hit the ground running. And the Bush administration shows that when you combine inexperience with a less impressive intellect (and stubborn temperment) things are much, much worse. He surrounded himself with neocon cretins, and the country has paid a terrible price for that mistake.

2) Tempermental fitness: I'd say Clinton comes in first here, based on how ridiculously even-tempered she's been when facing a media lynching throughout the campaign. She also strikes me as open-minded, detail-oriented, and hard working. Obama would come next. He seems to have a very natural leadership style and no obvious tempermental warning signs. McCain would come in a distant last place, based on his terrible temper.

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Funny you should say that about McCain. I was just speaking with a life long Republican.She said,"McCain scares her to death with his temper."

And Obama has shown little experience with the type of people he hangs out with. His choice of friends and Church make me wonder how he would choose the right person.

As I've said before, how important Obama's bad religious affiliations are depends on how sincere you think he is about his religious faith. If he's just faking it for political advantage, than it's not that worrisome that he chose nut jobs as his key spiritual advisors. In that case, he was just using them as convenient political accessories, so poor taste in such accessories is kind of like poor taste in handbags: it just doesn't tell us much about how good he'll be at picking key advisors when president.

If, on the other hand, you think he's sincere about how important his religion is to him, then his taste in spiritual advisors is very alarming. If he chooses that unwisely on a topic of the absolute deepest interest for him, then we should worry about how good his judgment will be when choosing other critical advisors, once in the White House.

In a nutshell: if you think Obama's a secular man hypocritically masquerading as someone for whom religion is deeply important, then the Wright story doesn't matter, but if you think Obama is who he claims to be, then the Wright story is very frightening.