The Missing Position Description

Part 1 of 3: A Presidential Standard

Oct 11, 2026 · Samuel R Lammie

The one federal job without a position description

The Constitution sets three qualifications for president: 35 years of age, natural-born citizenship, and 14 years of residence. That is the entire standard.

As a federal program manager, I hired against position descriptions and sat on rating panels. No applicant for a career federal position, from a GS-11 Geographer up, could clear the first screen without documented specialized experience, a published qualification standard, and a panel scoring the record against it. A senior executive must show five Executive Core Qualifications before the government will hand over a program. The office that commands all of them has no such standard.

The founders were right to leave the choice to voters. But voters need something to judge against, and no one publishes it. So here is one: a position description for the presidency, posted in the open before any candidate's name is attached. It endorses no one.

The filter, not the vote

I don't believe our elections are rigged. I do believe the field is filtered before any of us votes. Primaries reward money raised, attention captured, and intensity among the base. None of those is a qualification.

A candidate can clear all three with no record of running anything, keeping a secret, or telling the truth. A published standard puts a second filter beside the first, one built on the record instead of the reach.

One caution belongs up front. Résumés do not predict greatness. Herbert Hoover arrived with one of the strongest résumés of the century: mining engineer, organizer of Belgian relief, Commerce Secretary. The Depression overran him. Lincoln brought one House term and a law practice.

So this standard is a floor, not a forecast. Like any federal qualification standard, it screens out. It does not promise excellence.

The framers could afford a thin standard because they built strong checks. Congress was meant to correct a poorly chosen president. When that check weakens, as it largely has in recent years, the qualifications of the person in the chair carry more of the weight. Congress deserves its own standard, and I will come back to it.

 Position description: President of the United States

The government already wrote most of this standard, just not for the president. In October 2025, OPM revised the five Executive Core Qualifications every senior executive must meet. The first is now "Commitment to the Rule of Law and the Principles of the American Founding." A career executive must demonstrate it on paper. The person who appoints them need not.

PD element	Entry
Title	President of the United States
Series and grade	None established
Pay	$400,000 per year (3 U.S.C. § 102)
Accountable to	The Constitution, Congress, the courts, the electorate
Statutory qualifications	Age 35; natural-born citizen; 14 years a resident (Art. II, § 1); no more than two elected terms (22nd Amendment)
Major duties	Commander in chief; "take care that the laws be faithfully executed"; treaties and appointments with Senate consent; reprieves and pardons; report on the state of the union
Oath	"Preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States"
Proposed qualification standard	The 17 criteria below, grouped under the five current ECQs plus four the presidency adds

 

Here is how the criteria map onto the standard OPM already uses for senior executives:

Executive Core Qualifications (ECQ)	Criteria that measure it
Commitment to the Rule of Law and the Principles of the American Founding	Constitutional fidelity; criminal and civil record; classified-information stewardship; public–private separation
Driving Efficiency	Resource stewardship
Merit and Competence	Executive experience; national security experience; military service; judgment under crisis
Leading People	Temperament; communication; coalition building
Achieving Results	Policy results
Added for the presidency	Honesty; personal ethics; adversary posture and alliances; formative grounding

 

The rating schedule

Seventeen criteria carry 100 points. Eight, worth 45 points, are scored from the public record against fixed tiers, so any two raters should land within a point. The other nine, worth 55, take judgment. For those I show the evidence on both sides and leave the score to you. Each criterion is scored 1 to 10.

Record-scored criteria (45 points)

Criterion	Points	How it is scored
Executive experience	7	10 multi-year presidency · 8–9 governor of a large state, 4+ years · 6–7 big-city mayor, cabinet officer, or governor under 4 years · 4–5 military command or private CEO without public office · 1–3 legislative only
National security experience	5	Tenure, not performance. 10 commander in chief, multiple years · 8–9 under 4 years, or a cabinet security post · 6–7 seats on both Armed Services and Intelligence · 4–5 one security committee, or a governor's Guard command · 1–3 none
Classified-information stewardship	5	10 no documented incidents · 6–8 an inadvertent-mishandling finding · 3–5 documented negligent retention · 1–2 charged with willful retention or obstruction, whatever the trial outcome. A clean record with no clearance-level exposure is marked untested.
Military service	4	10 career service with combat · 7–9 career service · 4–6 short-term or enlisted service · 2–3 Guard or Reserve, no deployment · 1 none. Military-school attendance is not service.
Resource stewardship	4	Money and organizations, public or private, net of starting advantages and failures; score the larger record. 9–10 large public budget or enterprise run well for years, with audited results · 7–8 large budget or enterprise with mixed results, or mid-size with a clean record · 5–6 durable small or mid-size organization, including on outside capital · 3–4 founder or executive of a small venture · 1–2 no record, or serial failure
Public–private separation	6	10 no business interests, or full divestment · 8–9 blind trust or small disclosed holdings · 6–7 holdings with a documented controversy · 4–5 retained ownership with documented conflicts in office · 1–3 family business transacting with foreign governments or parties before the government
Criminal and civil record	7	10 no charges or adverse findings · 7–8 civil liability for fraud or misconduct · 4–6 misdemeanor conviction · 1–3 felony conviction. Pending appeals are noted, not credited.
Honesty	7	10 × (1 − share of PolitiFact-checked statements rated Mostly False or worse). Report the number of checks; under 20 checks, treat the score as provisional.

 

Judgment criteria (55 points)

Criterion	Points	The question
Constitutional fidelity	9	Does the record show respect for elections, courts, and limits on power?
Policy results	8	What measurable outcomes trace to this person's decisions?
Judgment under crisis	7	How did they decide under time pressure and uncertainty?
Adversary posture and alliances	6	How do they deal with hostile regimes, and do allies trust them?
Temperament	6	Self-command and proportion toward opponents
Coalition building	5	Can they build majorities beyond their base?
Personal ethics	5	Do they keep their word, and how do they conduct themselves?
Formative grounding	5	Did their upbringing and early service prepare them to serve?
Communication	4	Can they explain, persuade, and steady the public?

 

The index is the weighted average of the criteria actually scored, times 10. It always reports coverage, the share of points scored, beside it. A 90 built on 20% coverage means very little.

How it earns trust

A standard is only as good as its resistance to the person applying it, me included. Five safeguards are built in.

1. Published before it is applied. No candidate is named in this post. You can judge the criteria before you know whom they favor.
2. Three tiers kept separate. The record scores the record-scored rows, readers score the judgment rows, and readers set the weights. My defaults are shown, never required.
3. Calibrated on history first. The next post scores past presidents. If the standard rates Hoover high and Lincoln low, I will say so and explain why the floor still matters.
4. Tested across the aisle. Someone who does not share my politics will score two candidates blind. Where we differ by more than two points, the rubric gets tightened.
5. Same rubric for both parties. The 2028 post scores the leading Republicans and Democrats side by side.

One disclosure. Two of these criteria, classified-information stewardship and public–private separation, took shape while I was scoring a sitting president. I kept them because any trustee of the office should be measured on them. Publishing them here first, with no names attached, lets you decide whether that holds.

What comes next

This is the first of three posts. Grading Past Presidents tests the standard history. The 2028 Bench applies it to the likely field in both parties.

If a criterion is wrong, missing, or weighted badly, tell me before Post 2. A position description is a draft until the panel has argued over it.

A free people may hire anyone they choose. They should at least post the job.

Developed with Claude as an analytical collaborator.

Sources

• U.S. Constitution, Article II: qualifications, oath, powers
• 3 U.S.C. § 102: presidential compensation
• OPM Executive Core Qualifications: updated October 1, 2025
• PolitiFact personality scorecards: source for the honesty criterion