Aren’t both genders potentially too emotional to be President?

What if a male President is daily poisoned by testosteronic aggression/power madness to control everything, and his decision-making is skewed, and worse, destructive?**

On the other hand, what if a female President is daily poisoned by estrogenic over-nesting/ preservation of everything no matter what, and her decision-making is skewed, and worse, destructive?**

Assertions about “too much” testosterone or androgen, estrogen, progesterone, thyroxine, frootloopizine, or whatever else” interfering with clear thinking, aren’t even time-tested scientific findings that all scientists agree upon.

But, we all know how unstable testosterone-ulating men can be with their monthly surges of “everything here is mine,’ syndromes. Not to mention how undependable woman can be with their PMS– pre-murderous-strategizing– times.

In all seriousness, it seems that ability to be clear-headed and even-handed, thoughtful and deeply informed, and especially to be able to speak original ideas (called leadership), rather than pre-approved and tired lingo (called lackey-ship), seems a far more valid scale upon which to weigh either gender’s fitness to be President.

But you know, maybe there is something to the idea of hormones being a liability in either gender. There are these three odd clues in the US Constitution. What were those old guys thinking way back then when they wrote that no young men were allowed to run for the Presidency?

1. The Constitution requires that a candidate for President be at least age 35, a time when the hormonal stream is by no means depleted, at least not in the thousands of men I know (not Biblically, silly), but certainly hormones are not pushing the man into being a fissioning mass of cells all doing jumping-jacks at once, the way they did when he was 20 years old.

2. The old patriots also wrote into the Constitution that a man must be at least 30 years old to run for the position of Senator, implying that a Senator could be slightly less seasoned and calm than a 35 year old, but giving grace to the idea that a thirty year old had the education and experience to be well on his way to being a statesman.

3. The framers of the Constitution also wrote that to be a Representative to Congress, a man could still be a little on the wildly imaginative and impulsive side, as modern arguments and antics in the House are proofs of such to this day…. for such a contender for the seat of Representative need only be 25 years old.

These clues about whether the writers of the Constitution might have been thinking about how ‘a man’s juices’ might adversely affect his governance abilities, ought be weighed in at least one other way: The life span in the late 1700s and early 1800s in America, for many men, was not much past 45 years of age.

Interesting to speculate about what the framers were actually thinking when they set age boundaries for who was qualified to be a governing male. Fast turnover? Self-limiting term limits? And/or a chance at calmness, reflection, depth…

The age for females running for Federal office was not specified in the Constitution, although some argue the term ‘man’ in the Constitution was meant to include females… as in the word, ‘mankind.’

I’ve been a little slow to grasp, however, if a man would feel included if we only used the term ‘women’ to refer to him… meaning he’s included because the word ‘men’ is contained within the word ‘women.’

But, nonetheless, maybe the Constitution’s silence on age requirements for females running for high office, means the founders just took it for granted that a woman running for President was qualified because she’d be carrying the wisdom of the ages, and be, herself, ageless.

On the other hand, as we know, the framers of the Constitution really didn’t imagine a woman would ever run for President. But, just 231 years ago, no one could imagine either that there would one day be elected leaders of nations who didn’t inherit high office simply because they either murdered everyone who protested, or were in the line of succession as King.

Times change.

Indeed they do.

CODA
**A hundred years ago and as little as 25 years ago, classical psychology posited (greatly simplified here), that women were nurturers, and men, warriors. The old hunter-gatherer split.

But, in modern persons, it appears that there is no such clearcut dividing line or assignment of only certain traits according to gender.

Psychologically, there appear to be as many women warriors as male ones, as many nurturant men as there are female ones… and that in many many persons, there is an amalgamation of all the attributes traditionally assigned to one gender or another… a seeming best of all worlds for this poignant reason: Regardless of gender, the more traits a person has access to, the more adaptability to each situation in life.

Adaptability is powerful: for not just survival of the fittest, but thriving of the fittest… ‘fittest,’ meaning those who can make adaptations that work well in changing circumstances.

Rather than calling adaptation ‘flip-flopping,’ adaptation is actually a powerful strategy amongst the most prescient.

Having ’round heels’ and rolling along with whomever one seeks favor from, that is flip-flopping.

But changing one’s mind, one’s course, one’s strategy according to changing times, those are Presidential fitness items.

I’d mention as a sidebar, that being President seems to practically insure long life, even for Washington, Jefferson etc.. Perhaps with strong genetics, plenty of food early in life, clean water and no soldiering, the funds for medicines and doctoring, most Presidents lived to their 60s, and three to their 90s, eleven lived into their 70s, and seven into their eighties. Three reached 90. The three youngest were considerably older than age 35. We’ve never had a President under 42 years of age. Bill Clinton 46, John F. Kennedy 43, Teddy Roosevelt 42.