There is no more important decision an American voter can make than selecting who will become the next president of the United States, and voters should not be forced to guess whether a candidate is qualified to become president. In Qualified, author Jamin Soderstrom proposes a resume challenge that could revolutionize the election system and help to bring the presidential hiring process into the twenty-first century.
QUALIFIED
Candidate Resumes and the Threshold for Presidential SuccessBy JAMIN SODERSTROMiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 Jamin Soderstrom
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4620-4541-9Contents
AUTHOR'S NOTE.............................................XIIIPREFACE...................................................XVIIONE: The Resume Challenge.................................1TWO: The Constitutional Threshold.........................9THREE: Resume Creation and Analysis.......................17FOUR: Legislative Experience..............................29FIVE: Executive Experience................................51SIX: Military Experience..................................73SEVEN: Foreign Experience.................................95EIGHT: Private Work Experience............................115NINE: Education/Intellect.................................139TEN: Writing Ability......................................165ELEVEN: Public Speaking Ability...........................187TWELVE: The Qualified Threshold...........................215THIRTEEN: Intangibles.....................................233FOURTEEN: The Re-election Question........................257CONCLUSION................................................263APPENDIX A: Presidential Resumes..........................271APPENDIX B: Current Candidate Resumes.....................315APPENDIX C: Correelation Graphs...........................335BIBLIOGRAPHY..............................................345ABOUT THE AUTHOR..........................................349ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..........................................351
Chapter One
The Resume Challenge
You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today. – Abraham Lincoln
If you call failures experiments, you can put them in your resume and claim them as achievements. – Mason Cooley
The Modern Resume
LEGEND HAS IT THAT Leonardo da Vinci created the first professional resume back in the late fifteenth century. However, the more likely historical antecedent to the modern resume is the traditional practice of using letters of introduction, which dates back to feudal England and the Middle Ages.
Over the centuries, letters of introduction have slowly evolved into what is now considered the American-style resume. The modern resume is simply a short summary (one or two pages) of a person's relevant professional experiences, education, and abilities. In recent decades, improved technology has helped resumes become highly useful tools on both sides of the job search process. Resumes now help companies find and compare qualified candidates with each other and with specific job-related criteria. They also help candidates to demonstrate their interest in and qualifications for any open positions. Today, every professional job applicant must have an up-to-date professional resume in order to be marketable and successful, and every employer requires candidates to submit a resume at the beginning of the hiring process.
One reason why the resume submission process is so widely used is that it is simple, straightforward, and produces excellent results. It spans the fields of education, business management, journalism, medicine, financial services, government, and law, among many others. The simplicity and usefulness it brings to an otherwise unwieldy job search/ candidate search process makes a well-drafted professional resume perhaps the most valuable tool in a candidate's toolbox, and the most helpful document for an employer to review. By requiring a candidate to provide an easy-to-read summary of his or her qualifications, and by permitting an employer to easily compile and compare the resumes of the most qualified candidates, the resume submission process significantly raises the probability that the most qualified candidate will be offered the position.
It is safe to say that almost every professional who has successfully applied for a job in the last decade used a resume. In fact, most probably have an up-to-date resume on file for any future employment searches. This reality spans every profession and every professional ... except politics and politicians.
Presidential Resumes
Collectively, American voters are without a doubt the world's most important hiring managers and employers. They are always searching for candidates for local, state, and national political positions, and they spend big money doing it. Their search results help to hire mayors, members of city councils and state assemblies, governors, representatives and senators, and, most importantly, vice presidents and presidents.
Nevertheless, voters are still forced to compile for themselves—using the Internet, the media, candidate speeches and interviews, and any other available sources—whatever information they can find that they think may be relevant to their voting/hiring decisions. No simple, standardized system is used to help evaluate all of the potential candidates for political office at the beginning of the hiring process and to help weed out any unqualified candidates.
The current election process skips the crucial step of reviewing a candidate's basic qualifications (as would be summarized on a resume) and moves straight to the later step of interviewing the candidates. Voters and the media ask which candidates are "most liked" or "most agreed with" (or "least disliked") rather than which candidates are most qualified. Fancy campaign advertising and polished presentations in debates, interviews, and stump speeches seduce voters and the media alike. But come Election Day, all any voter can do is guess whether one candidate's qualifications are better or worse than the others'.
As recently as the 2008 election, the American voters/employers still used a backwards hiring proces. And to date, no presidential candidate has ever followed the most basic job search requirement by proactively distributing an official resume to his or her prospective employer, the American voters. With all that can be gained from evaluating a candidate's professional resume, there is no good reason why voters are not already insisting that all presidential candidates submit their official resumes to the American public prior to the 2012 election.
The Advantages
Many of the advantages of insisting that presidential candidates publicly release their official resumes are obvious. It will streamline the early stages of presidential campaigns, caucuses, and primaries. It will enable voters to carefully analyze and quickly dismiss any candidates who are clearly unqualified. And it will help voters to better compare candidates with each other.
Using a resume submission process will also give greater historical context to every presidential election, helping voters compare the basic qualifications of current presidential candidates with those of past presidents (both successful and unsuccessful). Making accurate comparisons between current and future candidates and past presidents becomes dramatically easier when using standardized resumes that are based on every president's constitutional, historical, and practical responsibilities.
Moreover, insisting on reviewing presidential resumes has no drawbacks. Resumes will never replace stump speeches, press interviews, public debates, or campaign advertisements. They may help narrow the field more quickly than usual, but that has a net positive effect provided that the remaining candidates are all qualified. And if an unqualified presidential candidate is able to gain enough public support despite his or her lack of qualifications, he or she is welcome to continue campaigning just as vigorously as if he or she was the most qualified candidate in history.
The media and the opposing campaign staffs will undoubtedly perform a thorough fact-check of every candidate's resume and will certainly broadcast whether a resume contains mistakes, falsities, half-truths, or exaggerations. This built-in and public vetting process will help to ensure honesty and accuracy in every presidential resume.
In the end, the resume process will save money and eliminate the fringe and grossly unqualified candidates at an early stage in the election cycle. Once all of the presidential candidates have survived the resume vetting process and have showed that they are qualified to become president, the biggest winner will be the American voters.
The Resume Challenge
Every four years, the Constitution vests in the American voters a crucial decision with profound national and global implications. They must select who will serve as the next American president. Every presidential election is a momentous occasion, regardless of the current state of the Union. Every election has potential either to keep America on the current course (good or bad), or to take America in a brave new direction.
The bad news is that the problems America is now facing, and will continue to face over the next decade and beyond, are large and are mounting. These problems include war, deficits, debt, immigration, tax revenues, healthcare, and terrorism, among many others. Each is important to the future of the nation, and each has been consistently demagogued by excessively partisan politicians, media personalities, newsmakers, and voters. Without leaders who possess a willingness to listen, to seek common ground, to find compromise—indeed, a willingness to be friends with those with whom they disagree—none of these issues will be resolved soon or in an acceptable manner. The failure to solve the problems in one's own generation unfairly burdens future generations, and is a failure of leadership on all sides of the political spectrum.
The good news is that history often repeats itself in a positive way. America has quite frequently found strong and enlightened leaders in times of crisis. Under the leadership of highly qualified presidents and other political leaders, America has generally held a steady course and has continued to pursue the collective American dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. America can be brought back from the partisan precipice at which it now stands because it has been brought back before under the leadership of great presidents.
Selecting qualified presidents is the collective responsibility (and should be the fundamental goal) of professional politicians, the media, and the American voters in each presidential election. As the results of this book's resume analysis demonstrate, more qualified candidates become more successful presidents. This leads naturally to the resume challenge:
Voters should insist that every presidential candidate submit an official resume to the American public prior to the 2012 election and every election thereafter.
Using the tried and true resume submission process will be a new and better way to ensure that future presidents will be leaders who are qualified—by constitutional, historical, and practical standards—to hold the office once held by Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt.
Obviously, requiring resumes from presidential candidates is not an earth-shattering proposal. But it is unquestionably a sensible step in the right direction. Candidates who can show from the outset of their campaigns that their basic qualifications—the sum of their experiences and abilities as would be listed on a resume—make them qualified to become president deserve serious consideration by the American voters. Candidates whose resumes show that they are unqualified for the presidency do not deserve such serious consideration.
Resume Previews
The resume challenge and the underlying analysis of the most relevant presidential qualifications are the most important parts of this book. The concept of the QUALIFIED THRESHOLD is the most important result. But the most interesting and useful pieces of information contained in this book appear in the appendices.
Appendix A provides forty-three presidential resumes, each of which describes in exacting detail (based on exhaustive historical research) every president's qualifications upon first taking office. Some of the most interesting (and surprising) presidential resumes include:
• the resumes of the ten presidents who took office with Great qualifications, most of whom became successful presidents;
• the resumes of the biggest presidential overachievers (Abraham Lincoln, Grover Cleveland, and Lyndon Johnson) and underachievers (Richard Nixon, John Quincy Adams, and Herbert Hoover); and
• the resumes of the most recent presidents, including Barack Obama (Average qualifications), George W. Bush (Below Average qualifications), and Bill Clinton (Near Great qualifications).
Perhaps even more interesting than the past presidents' resumes provided in Appendix A are the sample presidential resumes provided in Appendix B.
In an attempt to prompt public discussion of presidential qualifications, and to convince one or more current or potential presidential candidates to accept the resume challenge and release an official resume, Appendix B provides resumes for seventeen of the top or most talked about contenders in the 2012 presidential field. Unsurprisingly, the candidates' qualifications range from Great to Poor, and their personal backgrounds are equally diverse.
Some of the most interesting (and surprising) current candidate resumes include:
• Hillary Clinton's and Condoleezza Rice's resumes, which demonstrate that they are by far the most qualified potential candidates in the 2012 election;
• Sarah Palin's, Michele Bachmann's, and Chris Christie's resumes, which show that each of them is clearly unqualified to become president (at least in 2012); and
• Ron Paul's and Newt Gingrich's resumes, which show that they are each highly qualified but also that they have certain intangible characteristics that may harm their electability (e.g., old age, partisanship, past indiscretions).
Most of the other candidates' resumes are clustered in or near the Average and Above Average resume rankings. This simply indicates that in order for one of these candidates to emerge as the most qualified (and most electable) candidate and become the Republican nominee, he or she needs to differentiate himself or herself from the other candidates based on intangible characteristics rather than basic qualifications.
In the end, only qualified presidents can meet the political challenges of today and help ensure a brighter tomorrow. This book shows that there are several qualified (even highly qualified) contenders in the current candidate field who could become successful presidents. It also shows that President Obama was just barely qualified in 2008, and that he is vulnerable against a qualified challenger in what is certain to be a referendum election in 2012. It will be fascinating to see whether the Republican Party ultimately nominates qualified candidates for president and vice president, respectively, and whether President Obama is capable of fending off a pair of strong challengers.
Next Steps
Any candidate can submit a resume and cover letter for any position, including positions for which the candidate is unqualified. This is as true with candidates aspiring to the presidency as it is with any other professional candidate for any other professional position. Therefore, American voters need to know what qualifications actually make a candidate qualified to become president. Describing and analyzing the constitutional eligibility requirements and presidential responsibilities and qualifications is precisely what the rest of this book does.
Chapter Two
The Constitutional Threshold The Constitution is the guide which I will never abandon. – George Washington
The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity—unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity. – Henry Clay
THERE ARE TWO THRESHOLD measurements that should be used to determine whether a candidate is qualified to become president. The first determines whether a candidate is constitutionally eligible to become president: the CONSTITUTIONAL THRESHOLD. The second determines whether a candidate is, in all other relevant respects, qualified to become president: the QUALIFIED THRESHOLD.
Most of this book is devoted to providing an in depth analysis of the specific, relevant experiences and abilities that form the basis of the QUALIFIED THRESHOLD. But meeting the CONSTITUTIONAL THRESHOLD is the unavoidable first step in the presidential election process. Therefore, this book first discusses the six basic constitutional requirements that form the basis of the CONSTITUTIONAL THRESHOLD. The rest of the book then discusses the analysis and application of the other presidential qualifications which form the basis of the QUALIFIED THRESHOLD.
The Six Requirements
The six requirements that form the basis of the CONSTITUTIONAL THRESHOLD are non-negotiable. If any presidential candidate fails to fully satisfy them, he or she does not meet the CONSTITUTIONAL THRESHOLD and is ineligible to become president regardless of his or her other qualifications.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from QUALIFIEDby JAMIN SODERSTROM Copyright © 2011 by Jamin Soderstrom. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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