A reflection on the historical barriers to the American presidency.
President-Elect Biden will be 78 when he takes the Presidential oath of office on January, 20, 2021. He will be the oldest of America’s 46 presidents. Who was the second oldest?, you ask. President #45, Donald Trump, 220 days into his 70th year on Inauguration Day in 2017. Counting Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, 11 of America’s 46 presidents have been over 60.
Is 78 too old to be President of the United States?
America’s two youngest presidents were Teddy Roosevelt and John Kennedy. Roosevelt was 42 and Kennedy 43. A year ago 37 year old Pete Buttigieg was my choice to lead America’s Democratic Party.
Is 37 too young to be President of the United States?
Joe Biden will be America’s second Catholic President, sixty years after Kennedy broke that barrier, and 93 years after Al Smith became the first Catholic major party candidate for President.
Is Joe Biden too Catholic to be President of the United States?
Kamala Harris will be America’s first female, Black, and Asian Vice President.
Is Kamala Harris too female, too Black, or too Asian to be Vice President of the United States?
I suspect there are some Americans who would answer ‘yes’ to one or more of these questions. America’s Constitution weighs in on age and religion, stating 35 as the minimal age for President and that there be “no religious test for public office.” It says nothing about maximum age. America’s history weighs in on gender, race and ethnicity, which is why Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris combines those three ‘firsts’ 232 years after America’s founding. The same is true for religion and why it took 172 years for a Catholic to win the presidency, despite the “no religious test” clause.
Besides being bested by Joe Biden to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for President, what do Bernie Sanders, Michael Bennet, Marianne Williamson, Tom Steyer, and Michael Bloomberg have in common? A hint, they share this identity with former Vice Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, running mate to Democratic Party presidential candidate Al Gore in 2000.
Are any of these Americans too Jewish to be President of the United States?
And what about Pete Buttigieg married to husband Chasten?
Is Pete Buttigieg too gay to be President of the United States?
Too old, too young, too Catholic, too female, too Black, too Asian, too Jewish, and too gay? I don’t know about you, but to me asking any of these questions seems sort of un-American. Not un-American in the sense that each was or is still a genuine barrier to becoming America’s president. In that sense, each was very American.
What’s un-American is how each question is really an affront to the greatest words from America’s greatest Founding Document, the Declaration of Independence, written and contradicted by the Slave-Owning-Thomas Jefferson.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That we keep asking these questions is not really a surprise. America’s contradictions are obvious to anyone who takes the time to look carefully at its history. The contradictions are brought to light by the very ideals we say we believe in. America is both, the ideals and the contradictions.
What’s heartening to me is that more of us answer ‘no’ to the questions listed above or even better, don’t even think to ask them.
Is Joe Biden too old to be President?
One of the first calls President-Elect Biden received was from 83 year Pope Francis. Biden has faced none of the public worry that a Catholic president would be too beholden to a pope that Kennedy confronted in 1960. Prejudices die hard and then fade away.
The Francis – Biden call was just a conversation between the octogenarian leader of 1.3 billion Catholics and the newly elected septuagenarian leader of 330 million Americans.
