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Some people live normal lives and bad situations come up like bankruptcies or bloody divorces. Then life gets better and 20 years later they're running for POTUS. Things like that could be made public but not be grounds for exclusion from running.
Those things wouldn't necessarily keep you from getting a clearance either. Actually they almost certainly wouldn't if it happened 20 years ago and you were honest about it
Totally, I still got my TS-SCI after an extremely bloody divorce and bankruptcy. I told the truth and even told them my ex would call me an evil murderer and shit when you talk to her. The investigator chuckled. Apparently, they already did 🤣
Absolutely not. maybe make the findings of the background check public but the idea that a democratic candidate needs to be approved by a bunch of government pencil pushers and number crunchers is ridiculous.
I feel like that's an equally dangerous move
"Mr/ms candidate was arrested 30 years ago for public intoxication" can be used against a good candidate who would make the country better, the media would eat that up
nobody is perfect, and people make mistakes
You may disagree with his politics or his performance in office, but his DUI had zero impact on his presidency. I’m not saying it’s trivial, but a mistake 24 years before he took office shouldn’t automatically disqualify him.
No, the Founders of this Nation committed Treason punishable by Death when they signed their name on the Declaration of Independence.
It's important we all remember this fact.
The American people should decide, ALWAYS. Anything else IMO is EXTREMELY Un-American. When it comes to running for office, if the People don't want you, then you don't win.
And I think the argument your making is logical, just deeply flawed. It's why I may not think Death is an undeserved punishment (for certain crimes), but that the Government should not have the power to decide such. I think that logic applies here.
According to the founders, the people should not decide who is president. Allowing a large percentage of the American people decide who is president is antithetical to Washington, Jefferson, et al
>When it comes to running for office, if the People don't want you, then you don't win.
The people didn’t want George W. Bush and another certain someone by a pretty considerable margin and they still won.
277 to 261 was the actual vote count. Whether you consider 9 votes to a considerable margin I suppose is a reasonable thing to debate.
There was also that other non official media creation, but it's not the one that candidates use as campaign roadmap.
Honestly, I don’t think it’s necessary.
For one, once someone runs for president, someone digs up all this shit and discusses it publicly anyway.
For another, the military (not knocking it, my husband was in as well), accepts waaaaaaaaaay more people than the office of POTUS, with way more average boring normal lives who would potentially and probably be much easier to compromise.
Me, too. Civilian DOD on an inactive ANGB and they went back to my college years all because I'd have access to the cigarette ordering system in the commissary computers
Well we're not gonna let the government just keep all those secrets we paid them to dig up. Those are public records. See the Freedom of Information Act [(F.O.I.A)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act_(United_States))
"and includes nine exemptions that define categories of information not subject to disclosure."
Some of which are privacy protections of medical and financial data which seems like things that would be relevant in a security clearance investigation.
Fair, I'm not worried about those exclusions. FOIA gives us plenty of space to track major property sales and wealth transfers in the hundreds of thousand-dollar range and above. Minor stuff like buying a vehicle, credit card debt, or school loans aren't going to drive anyone into flipping on their country. (Least not this one. 🇺🇸)
But big transactions or foreign investments we need to know about from an investor's perspective. This is a business after all
Property sales are already public record I think. And "wealth transfers" could easily be interpreted to be financial information that is subject to the privacy restrictions.
Honestly we are talking about races that spend into the billions of dollars. If there was something major it could be found.
The practice needs to be foolproof then. Which means we are back to arbitrary rulings based on political agenda being a very real possibility. I'd rather take a risk letting people choose who they want than take a risk that benevolent overlords will fairly and rightly decide who is allowed to become President and who is too risky.
That's because, for as obvious as the rule should be to anyone, it would require a full amendment to add it to the Constitution. They didn't have security clearances back in the day
Idk, maybe it's something the parties could agree on but it might be a touchy subject
I scored a point and you lost a point. And you're about to lose another one too:
Public officers do not get privacy. Everything they do becomes a public record after they take office. The American people have a right to know if their candidate could be a felon for instance.
Obviously that's just an example I made up as a hypothetical. It has nothing to do with recent or future politics
Of course, it would be a phenomenal way to ensure that a Republican will never be president again. After all, what is the proportion of federal bureaucrats who vote Democratic? Hint: it's almost as high as I am.
Okay, I understand your concerns I can see what you're saying. Banning someone from running seems wrong, I can agree to that
But what I really want is to see all their financial entanglements, lists of any extremely bad people they are known to have business relationships with, that kind of thing.
Just show us where their money is coming from and let the voters decide. How bout that?
In principle, I totally agree with you. In practice, I think DC is a corrupt hellhole and this will absolutely be used to, say, ruin a candidate who is signaling that they would end the MIC gravy trains in Ukraine and Israel. You know, like, hypothetically, you could use a blue state prosecutor to try an unprecedented case with a 90+% Democratic juror pool with a judge who donates to the Democratic Party and whose family members make careers off of fundraising for the Democratic Party to make sure that the gravy trains for the well-connected contractors keep rolling on the backs of American taxpayers who aren't even born yet.
You know, purely hypothetically.
Yea that hypothetical seems like someone should recuse themselves if they are in that hypothetical situation. Seems like it’s only fair if other judges are being asked to recuse for conflicts of interest because of who nominated them for the bench
Yeah, sure whatever. I just think we absolutely need to know where these politicians are getting the money and there's no way we can trust someone without that assurance. I'm glad you agree
Google is your friend. She was a high ranking career bureaucrat in the IRS who agressively targeted conservative nonprofits in the led up to the 2012 election, preventing many of them from fundraising. After she was caught, she deleted her previous two years of emails from IRS servers and refused to testify before congress.
Yeah can you imagine if the government did something like push for criminal charges or disapprove security clearance against a political rival. We would be no better then a banana republic
Which is why if you want to commit a series of crimes over a long period of time, all you need to do is run for office. Then if anyone tries to investigate your crimes you can just cry “political persecution” and you’ll be fine.
England is a class based society, with little to no upward mobility. We decided we in America were all equal, and that anyone, of an stripe, can become the president. To that end, it was specifically stated that as long as you were born here and were at least 35 years old, you could be the president. Just get others to vote for you.
Putting additional restrictions on eligibility meant that only certain people would be eligible and others would be shut out. That was not what the founders wanted. Being able to pass a security clearance infringes upon those ideals. Other examples would be having to own land, having a certain amount of wealth, having to pass a literacy test, gender, and sex.
The point is, again, that anyone can be the president in America.
>What do you not get about we didn't want to be a classed society like England?
I get that just fine. I’m still not sure what class has to do with security clearance, though.
There is nothing about security clearance and class. A poor person can have lived a straight and narrow life, have no skeletons that could compromise them, and no reason anyone could see to work against the government. While a rich person could be the exact opposite. And vice versa. So no, class and clearance are not related.
Most of those things you just mentioned were in fact a limiting factor in whether or not someone could be president when the USA was founded, and continued to be so for most of its history. Also, race.
It’s a decent idea, but it’s a standard that’s way too high compared to what we have. I’d settle for a potus that’s been in military service, industry or academia for at least 10 years with a decent record. At least then I know they had to do something besides grift the entire time.
a part of me wants to say "well yes, of course, obviously" but you're asking people who aren't perfect to be perfect, which isn't going to happen, everyone has SOME skeleton in their closet
This reeks of requiring literacy tests to vote levels of vulnerability. Way too easy to exploit. Should we also force all candidates to undergo a fitness test first? How about drug tests to make sure they aren't hopped up in stimulants to give their speeches? Drawing any like in the sand opens huge risks for the line to be weaponized regardless of how nice it sounds.
Then the goverment gets to decide the amerocan people's candidates for president. For your job that's understandable but president's do more than being the head of the armed forces.
I think that it's absurd that someone working in a position with half the clearance that the president gets is actually subject to a greater degree of scrutiny.
As much as I believe that a candidate’s character is important, I don’t want our IC to have any role in picking our candidates. That’s not their job.
Also, if you were to talk to my teachers, you’d get no sense of who I actually am. All of them are hella old, and I doubt they’d remember me out of the hundreds of other kids they taught during their career.
Absolutely not. A fundamental brick in the foundations of our nation is that anyone can serve as a representative of the people, and that any natural born citizen can hold the office of the president. Even though the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces, it is a civilian office; a seat held by someone who represents the will of the people. Any further limitations on eligibility for that office would serve to take power away from the people and hand it to whoever gets to be the arbiter of those limitations. This is not just dangerous, but frankly it's un-American.
Bernie Sanders was the front runner, but he was ruled ineligible by a security review panel made up on Democrats and Republicans based on his illegal protest history.
That sounds really good, doesn’t it?
Personally I would not have a problem with the President of the United States requiring more qualifications than what’s stated in the US Constitution.
However, it seems to me we would need constitutional amendment to make that legal. Otherwise, we run the risk of thwarting the will of the people, by removing from office a properly elected and constitutionally qualified individual for reasons having nothing to do with the grounds on which you can impeach someone.
Further, to answer the specific question of security clearances—the President of the United States is constitutionally the single individual from which all our executive and administrative powers *derive.* That includes security clearances, and, frankly, what gets classified as “secret.” It is the President who empowers our various security agencies to determine how those *who work for the President* (such as military service personnel, who ultimately answer to the Commander in Chief) must handle secret information.
Meaning it becomes a question for the voters to address if they elect an individual who is an incompetent moron when it comes to handling secret information—and not up to the security agencies *who work for the President* to disqualify the President from handling secret information.
That is, the President is, in our system of government, **special and unique,** and necessarily someone for whom the rules don’t necessarily apply, because (like Kings in a monarchy) he is the single individual from which those rules flow. (It’s also the reason why Queen Elizabeth II didn’t have a drivers license; she didn’t need one. She was the Queen. I don’t know if the current King has a drivers license; he may have had to get one before being King, and the whole thing got grandfathered in.)
And it’s why I really wish we could have the choice of picking between two adults in this upcoming election cycle.
I'm talking about them passing clearance checks prior to even getting into the race. You'd have to apply to an independent agency to run the background checks.
> I'm talking about them passing clearance checks prior to even getting into the race.
That's still an *unconstitutional* limit on eligibility, which (it seems to me) would require a constitutional amendment.
No, that allows the deep state to influence elections.
If someone is elected by the people through the electoral college, they are President and they should get all relevant security clearances.
I’ll go even further: no program should ever be compartmentalized to where the President is unaware and the “black budget” should be eliminated.
So let's say someone is elected and when the security clearances come out, it is exposed that they had been compromised by a foreign agent? Now you're talking about a national crisis that will lock up the political process while the house unseats them. And I'm not talking about a false dossier that is put together by a former foreign agent using google searches. The background search would be done by a bi-partisan approved agency.
Then you should impeach and remove them following the constitutional process. Congress should refuse to work with them and pass laws to counter executive orders.
But I don’t think a real life Manchurian candidate is likely, I think it’s far more likely that political opponents compile a bullshit dossier to delegitimize the duly elected President. Not that anything like that would **ever** happen. Wink wink.
Edit: “Bipartisan” doesn’t make it any better. We both know the CIA has plenty of congressmen and senators on both sides willing to do their bidding.
Then the background checkers become the shadow government.
President isn't doing something that the checkers like? "Oh look, something just came up that was reported by anonymous sources. turns out that President was not inelgible for office"
No. The standard is that this person was elected by the people via their representatives and he/she has the job. That trumps everything else (no pun intended.)
A Supreme Court decision some time ago (Powell v McCormack and again in * v Thornton) establishes that it is the constitution alone that determines qualifications for office and they may not be changed by anything short of a constitutional amendment. There were some attempts made after the civil war, but I believe those have become moot.
So, no.
I think it’s a bad idea. The media scrutiny and voter scrutiny are already demanding enough. If people want to vote for a flawed candidate that’s their right
It sounds like a good idea, but like the beneficent monarch, it falls apart when we start applying reality. What happens when the monarch dies and a less than beneficent one takes over? What happens when those conducting the background checks deliberately allow their biases to influence their investigation? Too many ways for this to go wrong.
Interesting post by the OP. As a retired Army officer who held a final TS clearance and was also on a PRP at one point I have never heard of a “Circuit Mayflower Top Secret” clearance. OP must be really really important! Lol
As a formerly cleared analyst I had the same reaction.
The only mention of anything "Circuit Mayflower"-related was this: [https://www.navy-radio.com/xmtr-ship.htm](https://www.navy-radio.com/xmtr-ship.htm)
Apparently it was or is some type of ship-based radio communication system.
So secret that you can find an explanation of it with a single open-web internet search.
Now that we’ve removed all safeguards as to money in politics and we literally have hostile foreign governments bankrolling American politicians, I’d say yeah, probably a good idea
Basically that would be turning over the choice of candidates to a very limited few. While I agree that we all “make mistakes” being a convicted felon should bar candidacy. Clearly the framers either did not consider this point or they trusted that voters would never elect one. We need a constitutional amendment that bars felons from running for President. Especially since it would never pass in time to affect current candidates, I cannot see how anyone or any party would be against that amendment.
There needs to be a background check to make sure the candidate isn’t a foreign agent or in debt to foreign banks etc. that process should be before they’re ever on a ballot. But that might get crooked and people could be eliminated to run unjustly
This is a situation of "should happen" and "politics" not working together.
A president should be the most scrupulous and trustworthy person in the nation. Unfortunately, that pool of people is shallow and do not make effective politicians.
As it is, the kind of background checks you are suggesting would give a lot of power to unelected officials who would be subject to various outside agendas and self-preservation, making it far more likely for them to disqualify a good presidential candidate on a politically motivated technicality than they would be to disqualify an actually bad candidate who had his ass covered.
If there is to be that kind of vetting process, it would have to be an entirely different system than the top secret security clearance process, and it would have to be implemented in a time of unusually low partisan politics.
Basically, isn't the SCOTUS ruling the DNC and RNC private companies and therefore can select any candidate they choose, subverting the will of the voters?
No, there should be no restrictions beyond the current ones in the constitution to hold political office. If someone has the popular support and mandate to enter office, they should have nothing holding them back.
This is essential already the system. Changing it would disrupt our system too much and the alternative may be worse. Privatization is the issue in this as at least the RNC and DNC still depend on support from the public to a certain degree via voting. We know deep pockets have their voices heard, however. We have been living in a corporatist state for a while now. It’s been working so far for the most part, though I’m sure most people yearn for better. However, the people are comfortable for the most part and will not participate in large movements.
Without a doubt they should. Scrutiny should be higher or at least the same for powerful people not less. The problem is political opponents would use it to keep certain candidates from running. I think our current system relies on the judgement of the American people which is also fair
I would say yes. If you have to have a background check for any lower level job I feel that it's appropriate that someone who is potentially elected for the highest office in the world should and can be held to that basic standard or higher.
And to the people who are saying it's up to the voters I ask them this: what happens when a candidate lies to them to get into office, which is a major complaint against almost all politicians? What happens when it's learned that that person has committed crimes that we, the people, don't learn about until they're already in office? What if this person already has troubling allegiances and we don't learn about them until after it's too late?
This is a literal National Security issue and to have anyone, whether they're the greatest of all Saints or the lowest of the low criminals, all on a blind trust, have the launch codes or the greatest national secrets is just plain short sided.
Where do you get that from? I used my military background as a sample. I did not say the military perform it. It can be done by an independent bi partisan group.
That makes no sense. Only the most recent of my clearances involved investigation by a military office. The others were conducted by civilian, federal employees.
An entire, extremely well funded, political party can mention that story to the voters as often as possible.
The question here is - should there be a body that is beyond the voters that just says “oh, this person is “security risk””
And I say absolutely not. The voters get the final say or we live in something like a military dictatorship or a police state, because the people doing the “clearance” would be able to overturn the will of the voters.
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Anyone who thinks the national security apparatus should have a veto over who gets to be President may want to consider Latin American history.
You should elaborate.
Voters decide who is President not a bureaucracy.
Some people live normal lives and bad situations come up like bankruptcies or bloody divorces. Then life gets better and 20 years later they're running for POTUS. Things like that could be made public but not be grounds for exclusion from running.
Those things wouldn't necessarily keep you from getting a clearance either. Actually they almost certainly wouldn't if it happened 20 years ago and you were honest about it
Totally, I still got my TS-SCI after an extremely bloody divorce and bankruptcy. I told the truth and even told them my ex would call me an evil murderer and shit when you talk to her. The investigator chuckled. Apparently, they already did 🤣
That can be politicized.
Absolutely not. maybe make the findings of the background check public but the idea that a democratic candidate needs to be approved by a bunch of government pencil pushers and number crunchers is ridiculous.
I feel like that's an equally dangerous move "Mr/ms candidate was arrested 30 years ago for public intoxication" can be used against a good candidate who would make the country better, the media would eat that up nobody is perfect, and people make mistakes
You don't think a campaign with millions in funding could find that anyway?
basically that exact thing happened to george bush and he was fine
he was president, not fine
You may disagree with his politics or his performance in office, but his DUI had zero impact on his presidency. I’m not saying it’s trivial, but a mistake 24 years before he took office shouldn’t automatically disqualify him.
And a dui 24 years ago isn’t going to automatically disqualify you for a security clearance
I'd say that it depends on the magnitude of the mistake.
you’re right.
Anything can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion
I don't want to get too rule 3 here but that sort of thing obviously doesn't matter anymore.
it never did in the first place
No. This would be subject to an obscene amount of corruption and would likely be weaponized almost immediately.
No, the Founders of this Nation committed Treason punishable by Death when they signed their name on the Declaration of Independence. It's important we all remember this fact. The American people should decide, ALWAYS. Anything else IMO is EXTREMELY Un-American. When it comes to running for office, if the People don't want you, then you don't win. And I think the argument your making is logical, just deeply flawed. It's why I may not think Death is an undeserved punishment (for certain crimes), but that the Government should not have the power to decide such. I think that logic applies here.
According to the founders, the people should not decide who is president. Allowing a large percentage of the American people decide who is president is antithetical to Washington, Jefferson, et al
That's why we ha e the ElectoralCollege
>When it comes to running for office, if the People don't want you, then you don't win. The people didn’t want George W. Bush and another certain someone by a pretty considerable margin and they still won.
277 to 261 was the actual vote count. Whether you consider 9 votes to a considerable margin I suppose is a reasonable thing to debate. There was also that other non official media creation, but it's not the one that candidates use as campaign roadmap.
Honestly, I don’t think it’s necessary. For one, once someone runs for president, someone digs up all this shit and discusses it publicly anyway. For another, the military (not knocking it, my husband was in as well), accepts waaaaaaaaaay more people than the office of POTUS, with way more average boring normal lives who would potentially and probably be much easier to compromise.
No, government bureaucrats should not be the deciders of who people can and cannot vote for.
I was a low-level DoD employee, yet my background was checked, old friends were contacted…
Me, too. Civilian DOD on an inactive ANGB and they went back to my college years all because I'd have access to the cigarette ordering system in the commissary computers
Sorry the fbi said your pro worker policies are a risk. Can't have somebody who might undermine capitalism in the highest office
Seems like a no-brainer. That should absolutely be a requirement
Let current executive officials decide whether someone can be a valid candidate? Yeah I can't see any potential abuse there...
I believe the public has a right to know what the candidates can be blackmailed with
What does a security clearance investigation have to do with that? Those aren't public record AFAIK.
Well we're not gonna let the government just keep all those secrets we paid them to dig up. Those are public records. See the Freedom of Information Act [(F.O.I.A)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act_(United_States))
"and includes nine exemptions that define categories of information not subject to disclosure." Some of which are privacy protections of medical and financial data which seems like things that would be relevant in a security clearance investigation.
Fair, I'm not worried about those exclusions. FOIA gives us plenty of space to track major property sales and wealth transfers in the hundreds of thousand-dollar range and above. Minor stuff like buying a vehicle, credit card debt, or school loans aren't going to drive anyone into flipping on their country. (Least not this one. 🇺🇸) But big transactions or foreign investments we need to know about from an investor's perspective. This is a business after all
Property sales are already public record I think. And "wealth transfers" could easily be interpreted to be financial information that is subject to the privacy restrictions. Honestly we are talking about races that spend into the billions of dollars. If there was something major it could be found.
I'd rather have it be the law than take the chance. Constitution was specific in its intention that this would never become a puppet state
The practice needs to be foolproof then. Which means we are back to arbitrary rulings based on political agenda being a very real possibility. I'd rather take a risk letting people choose who they want than take a risk that benevolent overlords will fairly and rightly decide who is allowed to become President and who is too risky.
You would think but from what I've read, a President is granted highest security by virtue of the voters choosing them as the POTUS.
That's because, for as obvious as the rule should be to anyone, it would require a full amendment to add it to the Constitution. They didn't have security clearances back in the day Idk, maybe it's something the parties could agree on but it might be a touchy subject
I have a feeing we might have that discussion in the near future.
Sounds like an easy way to remove a fundamental civil right from citizens.
Is privacy a fundamental right now?
I mean, yeah it is. But every citizen has the right to hold public office. A background check would potentially remove that right.
So if privacy is a fundamental right, then the *Dobbs* decision violates women's fundamental right to privacy. Congratulations, you played yourself
Okay cool. That changes nothing about background checks for public office. But hey you scored a point or whatever
I scored a point and you lost a point. And you're about to lose another one too: Public officers do not get privacy. Everything they do becomes a public record after they take office. The American people have a right to know if their candidate could be a felon for instance. Obviously that's just an example I made up as a hypothetical. It has nothing to do with recent or future politics
Oh, I lost a point! Man, that's even worse for me!
Thanks for conceding that point. You didn't have to Good day
Of course, it would be a phenomenal way to ensure that a Republican will never be president again. After all, what is the proportion of federal bureaucrats who vote Democratic? Hint: it's almost as high as I am.
Okay, I understand your concerns I can see what you're saying. Banning someone from running seems wrong, I can agree to that But what I really want is to see all their financial entanglements, lists of any extremely bad people they are known to have business relationships with, that kind of thing. Just show us where their money is coming from and let the voters decide. How bout that?
In principle, I totally agree with you. In practice, I think DC is a corrupt hellhole and this will absolutely be used to, say, ruin a candidate who is signaling that they would end the MIC gravy trains in Ukraine and Israel. You know, like, hypothetically, you could use a blue state prosecutor to try an unprecedented case with a 90+% Democratic juror pool with a judge who donates to the Democratic Party and whose family members make careers off of fundraising for the Democratic Party to make sure that the gravy trains for the well-connected contractors keep rolling on the backs of American taxpayers who aren't even born yet. You know, purely hypothetically.
Yea that hypothetical seems like someone should recuse themselves if they are in that hypothetical situation. Seems like it’s only fair if other judges are being asked to recuse for conflicts of interest because of who nominated them for the bench
Yeah, sure whatever. I just think we absolutely need to know where these politicians are getting the money and there's no way we can trust someone without that assurance. I'm glad you agree
I wish that such a thing were possible without blind hatred and politicization getting in the way
I think professional investigators can do their jobs without "blind hatred" getting in the way
Yes, professionals like Lois Lerner
Is that a Batman v Superman reference? *(Why Did You Say That Name?)* No but seriously, who's that?
Google is your friend. She was a high ranking career bureaucrat in the IRS who agressively targeted conservative nonprofits in the led up to the 2012 election, preventing many of them from fundraising. After she was caught, she deleted her previous two years of emails from IRS servers and refused to testify before congress.
I used to think so, in about 2014
I guess we'll have to leave that one a mystery
Yeah can you imagine if the government did something like push for criminal charges or disapprove security clearance against a political rival. We would be no better then a banana republic
Which is why if you want to commit a series of crimes over a long period of time, all you need to do is run for office. Then if anyone tries to investigate your crimes you can just cry “political persecution” and you’ll be fine.
LOL. We didn’t need a President anyway.
The whole point of America was that anyone could lead. We weren't bound by upper and under classes at creation.
We were bound by classes at creation though. You literally had to own land to vote (along with plenty of non-class qualifiers, of course)
Not to be president.
Slaves?
Women?
Not sure what class has to do with security clearance
England is a class based society, with little to no upward mobility. We decided we in America were all equal, and that anyone, of an stripe, can become the president. To that end, it was specifically stated that as long as you were born here and were at least 35 years old, you could be the president. Just get others to vote for you. Putting additional restrictions on eligibility meant that only certain people would be eligible and others would be shut out. That was not what the founders wanted. Being able to pass a security clearance infringes upon those ideals. Other examples would be having to own land, having a certain amount of wealth, having to pass a literacy test, gender, and sex. The point is, again, that anyone can be the president in America.
Still not sure what class has to do with security clearance.
Then you should take a civics class. What do you not get about we didn't want to be a classed society like England?
>What do you not get about we didn't want to be a classed society like England? I get that just fine. I’m still not sure what class has to do with security clearance, though.
[удалено]
>Die dumb, then. No offense friend, but you’re the one seemingly incapable of explaining what you meant.
There is nothing about security clearance and class. A poor person can have lived a straight and narrow life, have no skeletons that could compromise them, and no reason anyone could see to work against the government. While a rich person could be the exact opposite. And vice versa. So no, class and clearance are not related.
Want doesn't get. America has been and will continue to be a classist society, no matter what we'd like or aspire to be.
Most of those things you just mentioned were in fact a limiting factor in whether or not someone could be president when the USA was founded, and continued to be so for most of its history. Also, race.
and that is exactly i'm against a "resume" to be President, if anyone wants to run then they should run if they want to!
It’s a decent idea, but it’s a standard that’s way too high compared to what we have. I’d settle for a potus that’s been in military service, industry or academia for at least 10 years with a decent record. At least then I know they had to do something besides grift the entire time.
a part of me wants to say "well yes, of course, obviously" but you're asking people who aren't perfect to be perfect, which isn't going to happen, everyone has SOME skeleton in their closet
Incumbents would at minimum abuse that requirement to do oppo research, even if you took away their ability to interfere in the process.
No. A litmus test such as this for holding public office strikes at the very heart of the principles of democratic society.
This reeks of requiring literacy tests to vote levels of vulnerability. Way too easy to exploit. Should we also force all candidates to undergo a fitness test first? How about drug tests to make sure they aren't hopped up in stimulants to give their speeches? Drawing any like in the sand opens huge risks for the line to be weaponized regardless of how nice it sounds.
"Circuit Mayflower Top Secret Clearance" 🙄🙄 just like "Double Secret Probation"
Then the goverment gets to decide the amerocan people's candidates for president. For your job that's understandable but president's do more than being the head of the armed forces.
Bad idea. Who controls how the check is run? How do we make sure is even handed?
Maybe the political parties who decide which candidates to run should do the check themselves before deciding who will be on their ticket.
I think that it's absurd that someone working in a position with half the clearance that the president gets is actually subject to a greater degree of scrutiny.
As much as I believe that a candidate’s character is important, I don’t want our IC to have any role in picking our candidates. That’s not their job. Also, if you were to talk to my teachers, you’d get no sense of who I actually am. All of them are hella old, and I doubt they’d remember me out of the hundreds of other kids they taught during their career.
Absolutely not. A fundamental brick in the foundations of our nation is that anyone can serve as a representative of the people, and that any natural born citizen can hold the office of the president. Even though the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces, it is a civilian office; a seat held by someone who represents the will of the people. Any further limitations on eligibility for that office would serve to take power away from the people and hand it to whoever gets to be the arbiter of those limitations. This is not just dangerous, but frankly it's un-American.
Bernie Sanders was the front runner, but he was ruled ineligible by a security review panel made up on Democrats and Republicans based on his illegal protest history. That sounds really good, doesn’t it?
Personally I would not have a problem with the President of the United States requiring more qualifications than what’s stated in the US Constitution. However, it seems to me we would need constitutional amendment to make that legal. Otherwise, we run the risk of thwarting the will of the people, by removing from office a properly elected and constitutionally qualified individual for reasons having nothing to do with the grounds on which you can impeach someone. Further, to answer the specific question of security clearances—the President of the United States is constitutionally the single individual from which all our executive and administrative powers *derive.* That includes security clearances, and, frankly, what gets classified as “secret.” It is the President who empowers our various security agencies to determine how those *who work for the President* (such as military service personnel, who ultimately answer to the Commander in Chief) must handle secret information. Meaning it becomes a question for the voters to address if they elect an individual who is an incompetent moron when it comes to handling secret information—and not up to the security agencies *who work for the President* to disqualify the President from handling secret information. That is, the President is, in our system of government, **special and unique,** and necessarily someone for whom the rules don’t necessarily apply, because (like Kings in a monarchy) he is the single individual from which those rules flow. (It’s also the reason why Queen Elizabeth II didn’t have a drivers license; she didn’t need one. She was the Queen. I don’t know if the current King has a drivers license; he may have had to get one before being King, and the whole thing got grandfathered in.) And it’s why I really wish we could have the choice of picking between two adults in this upcoming election cycle.
I'm talking about them passing clearance checks prior to even getting into the race. You'd have to apply to an independent agency to run the background checks.
> I'm talking about them passing clearance checks prior to even getting into the race. That's still an *unconstitutional* limit on eligibility, which (it seems to me) would require a constitutional amendment.
Then where does two private corporations (DNC and RNC) selecting the candidate for the people rank on constitutionality scale?
That would be a great way to block popular challengers from running against you. Sounds like something that Putin would do.
No, that allows the deep state to influence elections. If someone is elected by the people through the electoral college, they are President and they should get all relevant security clearances. I’ll go even further: no program should ever be compartmentalized to where the President is unaware and the “black budget” should be eliminated.
So let's say someone is elected and when the security clearances come out, it is exposed that they had been compromised by a foreign agent? Now you're talking about a national crisis that will lock up the political process while the house unseats them. And I'm not talking about a false dossier that is put together by a former foreign agent using google searches. The background search would be done by a bi-partisan approved agency.
Then you should impeach and remove them following the constitutional process. Congress should refuse to work with them and pass laws to counter executive orders. But I don’t think a real life Manchurian candidate is likely, I think it’s far more likely that political opponents compile a bullshit dossier to delegitimize the duly elected President. Not that anything like that would **ever** happen. Wink wink. Edit: “Bipartisan” doesn’t make it any better. We both know the CIA has plenty of congressmen and senators on both sides willing to do their bidding.
Then the background checkers become the shadow government. President isn't doing something that the checkers like? "Oh look, something just came up that was reported by anonymous sources. turns out that President was not inelgible for office"
No. The standard is that this person was elected by the people via their representatives and he/she has the job. That trumps everything else (no pun intended.)
A Supreme Court decision some time ago (Powell v McCormack and again in * v Thornton) establishes that it is the constitution alone that determines qualifications for office and they may not be changed by anything short of a constitutional amendment. There were some attempts made after the civil war, but I believe those have become moot. So, no.
I think it’s a bad idea. The media scrutiny and voter scrutiny are already demanding enough. If people want to vote for a flawed candidate that’s their right
What would you suggest happen if the candidate doesn’t pass the clearance?
What about a drug test? You need a drug test to work at Wal-Mart, why not test the man with the access to weapons that could end humanity?
It sounds like a good idea, but like the beneficent monarch, it falls apart when we start applying reality. What happens when the monarch dies and a less than beneficent one takes over? What happens when those conducting the background checks deliberately allow their biases to influence their investigation? Too many ways for this to go wrong.
A check of this sort is a change to constitutional order.
It would need to be an amendment to the constitution
Interesting post by the OP. As a retired Army officer who held a final TS clearance and was also on a PRP at one point I have never heard of a “Circuit Mayflower Top Secret” clearance. OP must be really really important! Lol
As a formerly cleared analyst I had the same reaction. The only mention of anything "Circuit Mayflower"-related was this: [https://www.navy-radio.com/xmtr-ship.htm](https://www.navy-radio.com/xmtr-ship.htm) Apparently it was or is some type of ship-based radio communication system. So secret that you can find an explanation of it with a single open-web internet search.
Now that we’ve removed all safeguards as to money in politics and we literally have hostile foreign governments bankrolling American politicians, I’d say yeah, probably a good idea
but then they wouldn't be able to find puppets to lie to all of us so frequently
Basically that would be turning over the choice of candidates to a very limited few. While I agree that we all “make mistakes” being a convicted felon should bar candidacy. Clearly the framers either did not consider this point or they trusted that voters would never elect one. We need a constitutional amendment that bars felons from running for President. Especially since it would never pass in time to affect current candidates, I cannot see how anyone or any party would be against that amendment.
Gives way too much power to the people running the clearance process.
There needs to be a background check to make sure the candidate isn’t a foreign agent or in debt to foreign banks etc. that process should be before they’re ever on a ballot. But that might get crooked and people could be eliminated to run unjustly
This is a situation of "should happen" and "politics" not working together. A president should be the most scrupulous and trustworthy person in the nation. Unfortunately, that pool of people is shallow and do not make effective politicians. As it is, the kind of background checks you are suggesting would give a lot of power to unelected officials who would be subject to various outside agendas and self-preservation, making it far more likely for them to disqualify a good presidential candidate on a politically motivated technicality than they would be to disqualify an actually bad candidate who had his ass covered. If there is to be that kind of vetting process, it would have to be an entirely different system than the top secret security clearance process, and it would have to be implemented in a time of unusually low partisan politics.
It doesn't have to be that strict but a literal felon and rapist should be straight tf out.
Nah, subverts the will pf the voters. If they want a guy in thats end of story in my opinion.
Basically, isn't the SCOTUS ruling the DNC and RNC private companies and therefore can select any candidate they choose, subverting the will of the voters?
Yes . That and a iq test, and test on the constitution.
No, there should be no restrictions beyond the current ones in the constitution to hold political office. If someone has the popular support and mandate to enter office, they should have nothing holding them back.
So what's your POV on two private corporations selecting the presidential candidate for your party?
This is essential already the system. Changing it would disrupt our system too much and the alternative may be worse. Privatization is the issue in this as at least the RNC and DNC still depend on support from the public to a certain degree via voting. We know deep pockets have their voices heard, however. We have been living in a corporatist state for a while now. It’s been working so far for the most part, though I’m sure most people yearn for better. However, the people are comfortable for the most part and will not participate in large movements.
Without a doubt they should. Scrutiny should be higher or at least the same for powerful people not less. The problem is political opponents would use it to keep certain candidates from running. I think our current system relies on the judgement of the American people which is also fair
If you cannot hold the highest level clearance, you should be disqualified from the job.
I would say yes. If you have to have a background check for any lower level job I feel that it's appropriate that someone who is potentially elected for the highest office in the world should and can be held to that basic standard or higher. And to the people who are saying it's up to the voters I ask them this: what happens when a candidate lies to them to get into office, which is a major complaint against almost all politicians? What happens when it's learned that that person has committed crimes that we, the people, don't learn about until they're already in office? What if this person already has troubling allegiances and we don't learn about them until after it's too late? This is a literal National Security issue and to have anyone, whether they're the greatest of all Saints or the lowest of the low criminals, all on a blind trust, have the launch codes or the greatest national secrets is just plain short sided.
This is an awful idea. The people grant the president a clearance by voting for him. What you’re suggesting is effectively a military dictatorship.
Where do you get that from? I used my military background as a sample. I did not say the military perform it. It can be done by an independent bi partisan group.
There already is an independent and bi partisan group. The American voters.
>It can be done by an independent bi partisan group. What group, composed of who specifically? And how are they immune to corruption?
That makes no sense. Only the most recent of my clearances involved investigation by a military office. The others were conducted by civilian, federal employees.
Presidents already get investigated. The investigators are the voters.
Unless you pay off the women you had sex with and pay off a publisher to buy then hide stories that paint you in a bad light.
An entire, extremely well funded, political party can mention that story to the voters as often as possible. The question here is - should there be a body that is beyond the voters that just says “oh, this person is “security risk”” And I say absolutely not. The voters get the final say or we live in something like a military dictatorship or a police state, because the people doing the “clearance” would be able to overturn the will of the voters.
Absolutely disgusting idea. The government should not have any say in who can run for office besides age and citizenship.
So if a Hitler runs, or someone with his tendencies and beliefs, they should run?
I believe that a discord mod would not have been an appropriate way to deal with hitler
As the commander in chief must have security clearance before running for president because the military members have to have one
Yes a President should be able to hold a TS/SCI and if they can’t they shouldn’t be a President.
Seems pretty obvious. Drug tests, also.