The age rule is exact: a person who is thirty-four on Election Day but turns thirty-five before the presidential term begins can satisfy the qualification when taking office. The residency rule asks for fourteen years in the United States, not fourteen consecutive years immediately before the election. Temporary travel or government service abroad does not automatically erase residence.

The phrase "natural-born citizen" is less mechanical than "born inside the United States." It is generally understood to include people who were citizens at birth under the Constitution and governing citizenship law, including at least some people born abroad to U.S.-citizen parents. The Supreme Court has not resolved every possible boundary. A careful explanation should therefore avoid claiming either that every person born abroad is eligible or that every such person is ineligible.

Congress may regulate elections and citizenship under its own powers, but it cannot simply add ordinary presidential qualifications to Article II. Nor can a state require presidential candidates to satisfy a different constitutional age or residency rule. Political parties may use additional standards when deciding whom to support, yet those internal preferences do not alter constitutional eligibility.

Legal qualification, ballot access, nomination, election, and service are different stages. A constitutionally eligible person may fail to qualify for a party primary or state ballot under valid procedural rules. A nominated candidate may lose the electoral vote. A person elected may later become unable to serve, which brings the Twentieth and Twenty-Fifth Amendments into the analysis. None of those later questions changes the original Article II list.

When a scenario describes a candidate, check the three qualifications one at a time. Do not substitute a politically attractive credential for a constitutional rule, and do not treat the popular vote as an eligibility requirement. If the dispute concerns term limits, succession, or inability rather than age, citizenship at birth, or residence, move to the later amendment that actually governs it.

Video lesson: Presidential Power: Crash Course Government and Politics #11