T. Boone Pickens said that a bipartisan presidential committee should factor in leadership experience, team-building skills and plans for prospective candidates’ administration. | Getty T. Boone Pickens calls for bipartisan panel to screen candidates for president

BP Capital founder T. Boone Pickens, a billionaire Republican donor, is calling for a bipartisan panel to determine who can run for president.

According to the Library of Congress, the only stipulations for running for president include being a natural born citizen, a resident of 14 years and at least 35 years old. Such limited standards allow political outsiders like Republican front-runner Donald Trump to run for president — and Pickens thinks they're not stringent enough.


“My big idea for 2016 is to put together a bipartisan screening committee that vets presidential candidates like we do anyone else applying for a job and recommends the best candidates possible,” Pickens wrote in a recent LinkedIn post. “We have people running for president now who don’t even have experience running a lemonade stand.”

Pickens, who donated to Jeb Bush early on before flirting with Ben Carson, said the committee should factor in leadership experience, team-building skills and plans for prospective candidates’ administration.

“Right now we have a process that emphasizes accusation and innuendo,” Pickens said, alluding to the incessant brawls among Republican primary contenders. “Fact-checking is done … after the fact. And just like reality TV, there is too much of an emphasis on the inconsequential and the irrelevant. Such a vetting process could alleviate much of that.”

The problem, Pickens highlighted, is that it’s just too easy for virtually anyone to run for — and win — America’s highest elected office. “We’ve turned our presidential selection process into a reality TV show,” he said. “Hell, it’s worse than reality TV. Because this reality TV show is about the [sic] selecting the leader of the free world.”

Pickens said his proposal was more of an “idea” than a “plan” but added that the U.S. can do better than what it’s doing now and called on other Americans to suggest ideas to reform the qualifications required for presidential candidates. “We now have a presidential election process that penalizes success and accomplishment and rewards those without battle scars from business or politics,” he said. “You don’t have a record of achievement? Well, then the media shies from tough scrutiny.”