The December 1943 DC Comics cover of Wonder Woman running for President.
There have been forty-six presidents in U.S. history, and by many standards they’ve been fairly similar men—similar in ethnicity, height, religion, chosen professions, and age.
All but a very few had at least one ancestor who arrived on American soil in colonial days.
(Therefore, many either were slaveholders, or had ancestors who were slaveholders.)
Thirty-one served in the military.
Twenty-seven were trained as lawyers.
All but two (Catholics Kennedy and Biden), were Protestants—with thirteen Episcopalians.
It’s evident that there’s been “a presidential type,” and that for generations Americans tended to be fearful of non-British influence.
Of course, women have been cast as U.S. presidents in various films and television shows.
Presidents were portrayed as women in science-fiction projects like 1953’s Project Moon Base, and 2016’s Supergirl TV series (in which Lynda Carter was President Olivia Marsdin).
Most of the time, the productions have been comedies: 1964’s Kisses for my President; a 1985 TV series, starring Patty Duke (called Hail to the Chief, that lasted seven episodes); and most recently—Presidents Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Laura Montez (Andrea Savage)—in the Emmy-winning HBO TV series, Veep.
Although Candidate Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, all elected presidents have been White Christian men of Northern European descent—with one exception (Barack Obama) who isn’t White, but fit most of the other criteria.
Despite the fact that there were many Dutch, German, and Swedish immigrants in the colonies, it won’t shock anyone to learn that nearly all U.S. presidents had strong roots in the British Isles and Ireland.
The only exception was the 8th U.S. President, Martin Van Buren, who was of pure Dutch descent.
(In fact, English was his second language.)
Dwight D. Eisenhower was predominately German and Dutch, with some British ancestry.
Donald Trump is half-German.
The U.S. is supposed to be a “melting pot.”
Yet, few people whose parents (or grandparents) weren’t born here, made it to the White House.
Three presidents—Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan and Chester A. Arthur—were the sons of fathers who were born in Ireland, and had mothers whose people were long-time U.S. residents.
Barack Obama is the only president with a parent of non-European ancestry—but although his father was Kenyan—Obama also had deep roots in America (and in the British Isles), through his mother.*
Woodrow Wilson was exceptional in that three of his grandparents were born in Ireland and Scotland.
Trump’s paternal grandparents were Germans, and his mother was a native of Scotland, making him a true “child of immigrants.”
(It’s bizarre that an “anti-immigration politician” would be one of the few whose ancestors arrived in this country so recently.)
We don’t have DNA results for many U.S. presidents.
However, it’s safe to bet that no presidents have ever been of mainly southern European, Native American, Jewish, French, Russian, Scandinavian, Slavic, South American, or Asian descent.
In Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves by Henry Wiencek, Wiencek describes how Jefferson recoiled from the prospect that “foreigners” would get the vote.
He’s quoted as saying: “They will infuse into [the law] their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.”
What Jefferson, and other Founding Fathers, feared was that “foreigners” (at that time, numerous Dutch and German settlers) were slow in assimilating into Anglo-Saxon culture.
At 6 feet 4 inches, Abraham Lincoln was the tallest president.
Twenty-six of our presidents have been 5 feet 11 inches tall, or taller, and only three (Van Buren, Harrison, and Madison) were 5 feet 6 inches or under.
(The average male height in the U.S. has been 5 feet 9 inches, from 1776 through 2023.)
Although presidents are allowed to be as young as 35, most have been in their mid-fifties.
The youngest president was Theodore Roosevelt; he was 42 when he became president in 1901 (after President McKinley’s assassination.)
John F. Kennedy was the youngest elected president at age 43.
The oldest president was Joseph Biden who was inaugurated at age 77.
Until 69-year-old Ronald Reagan was elected in 1981, only two other presidents (Harrison and Buchanan) had been in their late 60’s when elected.
(It’s without precedent that the U.S. may be considering an 82-year-old Democrat running against a 78-year-old Republican, in November of 2024.)
The Constitution lists three qualifications for becoming president.
Candidates must be at least 35 years old, a natural born citizen, and a U.S. resident for fourteen years.
However, the phrase “natural born” wasn’t defined.
Was John McCain “natural born,” although he was born in the Panama Canal Zone?
Was Ted Cruz “natural born,” although he was born in Calgary, Canada?
British law of the era (when the qualifications were established), allowed foreign-born children to be “true native subjects” as long as at least one parent was British.
Thus, there’s a legal precedent for both McCain and Cruz being “natural born,” with John McCain’s case being stronger.
(Both John McCain’s parents were U.S. citizens, and his father, Admiral John S. McCain, was stationed in Panama.
Although Cruz’s father wasn’t a U.S. citizen, his mother was dual citizen of the U.S and Canada.)
It's interesting that the Trump administration changed the law—on October 29, 2019—so that automatic citizenship was taken away from children of U.S. government employees, and members of the armed forces, if the children were born on foreign soil.
(Now, these parents must apply for citizenship for their children.)
Since a child born abroad to two married U.S. citizens traveling abroad automatically acquires U.S. citizenship, it seems odd that the law was altered.
Does the Government just want more paperwork to shuffle?
According to Jamelle Bouie’s 7/2/23 N.Y. Times column “What Frederick Douglass Knew and Trump and DeSantis Don’t,” the Trump administration searched for a way to end birthright citizenship, but was unsuccessful.
Boule says that “the attack on birthright citizenship is an attempt to stigmatize and remove from society an entire class of people.”
(Is Trump still carrying a grudge because Ted Cruz beat him so many times in the 2016 presidential primaries?)
If Republicans were able to eliminate birthright citizenship, what would the phrase “natural born citizen” mean, and why was this phrase used in the first place?
Obviously, the Founders were afraid of foreign influence, and didn’t anyone with strong ties to another country to be in charge.
Furthermore, they wanted all presidents to have been born on U.S. soil, and not to have acquired citizenship by governmental decree.
(They may have accepted a person born on foreign soil to American parents—as long as they were raised on U.S. soil—but we don’t know that for sure.)
The Founders didn’t mention experience, or education level, as a qualification for the presidency.
Despite some expressing anti-German prejudices, they didn’t specify ethnicity, or being from the British Isles.
They didn’t specify being a landowner.
They didn’t even mention whether a President could be a man or a woman.
They only listed a minimum age, being born on American soil, and residing here for at least fourteen years.
Making the qualifications minimal was an excellent decision, and I’m sure doing so was purposeful.
*According to Ancestry.com, President Barack Obama has extremely deep roots in the U.S.
He’s the 11th great-grandson (through his mother, anthropologist Stanley Ann Dunham) of John Punch—an African man who attempted to escape indentured servitude (in 1640), and ended up a slave in colonial Virginia.
Obama’s mother also had ancestors from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, and Switzerland.
