It seems apparent that Vice President (and obviously on-deck president) Kamala Harris can neither compose nor utter a coherent multi-clause sentence.  The scurrilous rumor that Harris cannot sign her name without using tracing paper has yet to be debunked.

The founders never imagined that their minimalist eligibility requirements to become president would be such a low bar, unable to filter out the abject fitness deficit repeatedly displayed by Kamala's inability to grasp the rudiments of intelligible communication.

"There is such a great significance to the passage of time."  Is this a quote from the late iconic theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking in his Brief History of Time or just another repetitive banality from Kamala, the word-salad chef extraordinaire?

In Federalist 68, Alexander Hamilton writes about "The Mode of Electing the President": "It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue."  Hamilton never contemplated that the candidate pool would ever be so lacking as to admit a logician's nightmare into the seat of "Chief Magistrate."

In Federalist 69, "The Real Character of the Executive," Hamilton suggests the real reason for the minimalist eligibility rules in Article II, Sec. 1 is to highlight the novel idea that everyman — any common person in America — could become president.

Everyman, or common folk at the time of the American Revolution, were exceptionally literate — some estimates say that by the time of the Constitutional Convention, 90% of New England colonists read, wrote, and could do sums.  Literacy meant reading, comprehension, synthesis, playback, expressing an original thought, summarizing assertions, claims, observations, oaths, sermons, broadsheet news, transaction documents...and more.

Thus, literacy tests were unnecessary.  The founders assumed a certain baseline of language competency, and by no means expected an exceptional facility.  Nearly everyone possessed or borrowed that building block for citizenship, Noah Webster's Blue-Backed Speller, first printed in 1783.  Moreover, virtually every household, farmstead, frontier cabin, ship captain's quarters, and artisan's workshop had a well worn copy of the King James Bible, and perhaps Pilgrim's Progress.

Thomas Paine's Common Sense sold 120,000 copies in 1776; 500,000 copies were printed by the end of the Revolutionary War.  All in a colonial realm inhabited by 2.5 million people, plus some half-million people belonging to native tribes and enslaved blacks.  Even among the slave population, literacy is estimated to have been nearly 10%.

Black American literacy progressed to nearly 70% by 1910.  In 1780, 92% of black Bostonians were literate.

So what's Kamala's excuse?  Apparently, when coherent speaking skill pills were dispensed, Kamala missed the school bus that day, off protesting literacy as racist, and filled with the stench of white privilege.

Imagine this: Kamala Harris, supreme purveyor of fiddle-faddle, hodgepodge, and shilly-shally, president of the United States.  Now, there's a first worth noting.

Noah Webster — wipe your tears and call your printer, pronto.  We need one more copy of Blue-Backed Speller, audiobook version preferred.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0 license.