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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAre you kidding me???
Presidential candidates are not required to pass a security clearance background check???
That is an enormous hole in our national security structure.
If they had to pass a security check before finalizing the nominees, we would have...
No more refusing to produce tax returns.
No more playing patty cake with foreign oligarchs.
No more sharing top secret information with foreign dictators.
No more presidents compromised by their sexual exploits.
No more presidents suspected of having a history of money laundering for Russian mobsters.
No more presidents who are owned by the Russian controlled NRA.
And so on...
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)TryLogic
(1,723 posts)JHB
(37,161 posts)That wasn't a "Trump" problem, either. They let Romney get away with an incomplete fig leaf of a tax return disclosure, which gave Trump the leeway to blow off disclosure entirely.
riversedge
(70,299 posts)TryLogic
(1,723 posts)happybird
(4,623 posts)Same goes for his kids and lil' Jared. Too much debt, too many sketchy loans, too much incentive to sell access or info for personal gain. And that's just the tip of the uglyass iceberg.
We absolutely need to have the laws pertaining to candidates updated and clearly, unequivocally defined.
JHB
(37,161 posts)"More stupendous than stupendous! Healthiest, most secure human ever! Passed, with flying colors! Billy!"
NewJeffCT
(56,829 posts)He grew up and inherited the family business from his Daddy.
Poiuyt
(18,130 posts)Before 2016, every candidate has been a true patriot (even if I didn't agree with their policies). I've never doubted anyone's allegiance to America before Trump.
I posted a question a week or two ago about what laws or policies should be changed in the wake of trump. Maybe this should be one of them.
Exactly.
My thinking has been the RNC failed in their duty. They should have rejected his candidacy after vetting him.
Wounded Bear
(58,706 posts)Not so much with this asshole.
doc03
(35,364 posts)can't pass he can just give them clearance. I had to pass a TS clearance to work at AT&T.
SCVDem
(5,103 posts)Should not be sworn in.
It also cost us a shitload of money on a wasted election. We need to have these checks and we should have had them forever.
There is just no way in hell we would have an orange disaster golfing away our money and giving away our treasure!
Another thing to do in the new congress.
bitterross
(4,066 posts)The Constitution sets out the requirements for becoming President. To add a background check would be to add a requirement not in the Constitution.
Yes, gaping hole that didn't matter until 2016. The Electoral College was supposed to be able to prevent a Trump Presidency, not facilitate it.
riversedge
(70,299 posts)unblock
(52,317 posts)Requiring a candidate to "pass" a background check would indeed be unconstitutional, and rightly so as a tyrannical administration could abuse that power to determine the next candidates.
However, requiring candidates to *disclose* the information one would normally supply for a background check is not unconstitutional, afaik.
There are already other requirements to get on the ballot, such as petitions with many signatures, etc.
I think it's not a constitutional problem to require tax returns to be disclosed in order to be on the ballot, e.g.
bitterross
(4,066 posts)Since CA made that a requirement it has been challenged. I suspect, given the current make up of the courts, that will be found unconstitutional.
It's not that far from your example of "passing" a background check. A tyrannical administration could put unreasonable disclosure requirements into law to try to limit the candidates. Even now, some people say tax returns are a "private" matter that should not be required. That is not just the Trump supporters.
What about sealed criminal court files? Are those fair game? If a state made the requirement that all criminal and civil court records be disclosed is that okay? There is possible harm to the people who are a part of those cases who are not running for office. This could cause some good people to not run in order to protect others.
It's not quite as simple a question as it seems.
unblock
(52,317 posts)I agree that even "disclosure" could be taken too far.
I had a security clearance once upon a time, and I don't think political candidates should have to go through that entire process even if the information gathered is merely disclosed, not evaluated or used as a bar to the ballot.
If nothing else, a lie detector test would be ridiculous. Even if you believe that they are accurate when the person running it is fair, it's obviously easily manipulated if the person running it has a bias.
That said, there's plenty of room for reasonable disclosure about candidates, including basic financial information such as tax returns and investments.
The public interest in knowing financial incentives of their elected officials generally outweighs other considerations, imho.
Mariana
(14,860 posts)Passing a security clearance background check is not one of the requirements, unfortunately.
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,414 posts)CloudWatcher
(1,851 posts)The current administration could simply refuse to grant security clearances to any opposition candidates.
At one point I might have dismissed this level of paranoia, but Trump would use it in a nanosecond to keep power.
Response to CloudWatcher (Reply #13)
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RandiFan1290
(6,242 posts)We have Democratic candidates.
erronis
(15,328 posts)A security check is not to see if someone can recite the pledge of allegiance.
It is to see if they have the ability to withstand corruption and enticements. That they have exhibited a moral character and don't have stuff in their closet that the can be blackmailed with.
You can be a pot-smoking ex-commie-symp with some interesting life under your hood and still get a Top Secret/Q/compartmentalized (I did). The main thing is that you are honest with the interrogators and that you don't have something hanging over your head (debt, scandals, bribery, crimes) that can be used to turn you against the country.
Dotard/durak (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B4%D1%83%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BA) fails on almost all tests. How banks actually loan him money beats me. Unless the bankers are in the same sleaze bucket.....
CloudWatcher
(1,851 posts)Yes. And this is why Clinton's policy of Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell was obscene from the start. The point is to not have something that can be used as leverage.
mainstreetonce
(4,178 posts)He never should have been allowed in that stage.
erronis
(15,328 posts)If there was a decent honest human in the RNC that might have disagreed with bringing in the corrupt dumpster, that human was evicted, shunned, exiled.
This was a planned coup of the repuglicon potty and an attempted coup of whatever-we-call democracy in the US.
To benefit? Perhaps foreign states. Perhaps US-based oligarchs.
Not to benefit: the poor dump whites that got their dander stoked with careful messaging.
patphil
(6,207 posts)There's going to be a whole new rule book for candidates and for presidents.
One thing I would like to see is making the Attorney General a civil service position, along with a lot of other jobs in the justice department.
We can't really trust the president to nominate/appoint anyone anymore.
Unfortunately most of these appointments are just about impossible to take out of the hands of the president.
Trump, and Mitch McConnell, have shown us how vulnerable our government is to totally amoral, self-absorbed, callous, unpatriotic shitheads that don't have any concern for the people.
They, and many more like them, have put this nation at risk and there is no easy fix for the damage they have done.
Patrick Phillips
Response to TryLogic (Original post)
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