What does it take to be the president of the United States? A college degree? Good grades? A wealthy family? Actually, none of these is required. The United States has had presidents who came from poverty, who had little or no formal education, and who have not done well in school.

The Constitution only includes three formal requirements:

• Must be a natural born citizen.

• Must be at least thirty-five years old.

• Must have resided in the United States for at least fourteen years. Those years do not have to have been consecutive or recent.

Of course, there are other qualifications not listed in the Constitution that have evolved over time. With the rise of mass media, the president has increasingly needed to appeal broadly to various groups in society. Before assuming the office, presidents typically have held some other public office or, in rarer cases, have had a stellar military career. There have been presidents who won in the past but who might not be elected today. For example, it would be hard to imagine electing a president today with a high, shrill voice (John Quincy Adams), or one who was the father of an illegitimate child that was kept in an orphanage before being adopted (Grover Cleve-land), or one whose favorite hobby was cockfighting (Andrew Jackson). However, it would all depend on the media packaging and the charisma of the presidential candidate involved.

Richard Nixon seemed like a shoe-in going into his election against John F. Kennedy in 1960. However, once he met with Kennedy in a series of televised debates, his lead shrunk considerably. His haggard appearance and lack of makeup compared to Kennedy's tanned, all-American look made Nixon seem lackluster at best. Many credit the first debate with the beginning of the end for Nixon in the election.

The Nominating Process

Before running for the presidency, a person has to be nominated. In America, we have developed a two-party system. Even though third parties exist and their members have run in presidential elections throughout history, they are not considered major parties. These parties fulfill important roles like bringing up important issues and protesting certain policies. However, the true contenders for the presidency have typically come from two major parties, which today are the Democratic and the Republican parties.

At first, the individuals who were nominated to run for president were handpicked by small groups or caucuses. The congressional caucuses were used from 1800 to 1824. However, these were seen as corrupt and, by 1832, both parties had moved on to using national conventions. Conventions were at first controlled by a small group of individuals.

To combat this, the presidential primary was introduced, in which citizens (either intraparty or interparty) vote for the presidential nominee. Today, this system is complicated with some states holding all primary elections (Florida), some states holding just caucuses (Iowa), and some parties within states holding either a primary or a caucus (New Mexico, for example, has a caucus for the Democrats and a primary for the Republicans). The results of these primaries and caucuses are used to determine which delegates get sent to the national convention for each party where the nation's candidate is chosen.

Popular Versus Electoral Vote

Once the candidates are determined, they begin running against each other. In primaries candidates often run against members of their own party who will then become their supporters in the national election. The American governmental system is set up in such a way that the president is not actually chosen directly by popular vote. Instead, we have an electoral college system.

The founding fathers set up a system wherein the popular vote determines who becomes a member of the House of Representatives in Congress, the states determine who becomes a senator, and the elite decide who becomes president based on how the people vote for this position. Their goal was to keep the presidency from becoming a popularity contest and being subject to the “tyranny of the majority.”

Thus, the electoral college system is based on the popular vote. Each state is given a number of electors equal to their membership in Congress. For example, small states who have only one representative are given three electoral college votes. According to the twenty-third amendment, Washington, D.C., is also given three votes.

Each state is allowed to determine who becomes an elector. All but two states use a winner-take-all system wherein whoever won the popular vote for the state — even if by only one vote — gets all the electors for the state. For example, George W. Bush received all twenty-five electors for the state of Florida even though it was eventually determined that he won by only 537 votes in the state. On the other hand, Maine and Nebraska use a proportional system wherein the electors are divided according to the results of the popular election.

Despite the method for determining electors for a state, electors themselves are not compelled to vote with the people. Faithless electors are those who do not vote for the candidate they were chosen to represent. Electors are meant to check the popular vote, so this leeway is central to their charge.

The electoral system has resulted in the election of presidents who did not win the popular vote. These include the Hayes/Tilden, Jackson/John Quincy Adams, and Bush/Gore races. In each of these cases, the person who won the plurality of the people's votes did not win the presidency. It is also common for someone to win the presidency without winning the majority of the popular vote (more than 51 percent).