On "Qualifications" of Candidates for President

A Fox News poll found that:

...more people think Clinton is "very" qualified to be president than any of the other top contenders. Setting aside how they would vote, nearly half of Americans (47 percent) say they think Clinton is "very" qualified, followed by John McCain at 34 percent, Giuliani at 32 percent, Barack Obama at 23 percent, and Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson both at 16 percent.

What is surprising to me about these results is that more than half of those polled don't know that all these candidates are fully "qualified" to be president. The actual qualifications to be president are just a little stronger than being a breathing human being: The President of the United States must be a natural-born citizen who has lived in the United States for 14 years and is more than 35 years old. That's it! You and your neighbors are most likely qualified to be president.

Okay, I understand that the pollster and most of those polled were probably thinking more in terms of the background and experience of the candidates than in terms of the legal qualifications, but that's not what the poll asked. This is the problem I have with polls. There is no way to know if the respondents are interpreting the questions the way the pollster intended.

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