Twice during my early working life I had to get a security clearance. This process involved listing all one's associates and relatives, everywhere one had lived, worked, gone to school, etc., etc. Then investigators went around asking questions about you until the government was satisfied you weren't a secret Communist or some other kind of subversive risk.
I met these investigators because on other occasions they visited me at the university inquiring about my former students. The alums needed security clearances for their work.
I bore you with this ancient history because it occurs to me that our president could not pass these screens, could not get a security clearance. His association with Frank Marshall Davis, William Ayres, Bernadine Dohrn and Jeremiah Wright, his living overseas, his admitted drug use, his use of multiple names, his unprovable assertions in his autobiography and his questionable associations while in college would all be problematic.
He's lucky he doesn't need a security clearance. Several of the president's appointees would have similar problems.
