By now, there's a good chance that you've read something or another about the whole "Is John McCain a "Natural Born" Citizen" thing - it's caught quite a lot of attention over the last few days. It's certainly caught mine - not because I'm concerned about the question of whether military brats born overseas can be president, but because so many people are acting like complete idiots.
If you're not familiar with the story, here's a quick rundown. The Constitution requires that the President be a "natural born" citizen. John McCain was not born in the United States. He was born in the Panama Canal Zone while his father was stationed there. On Thursday, the New York Times ran a story that addressed the question of whether or not McCain is a "natural born" citizen. (The short answer: McCain's almost certainly a "natural born" citizen, but the question has never actually been tested, so there's a limited amount of room for doubt.)
The Times story has lead a number of people to act like complete fools. The schmucks in question include (in no particular order): Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri; NBC News justice correspondent Pete Williams; and the various wingnuts who are up in arms about the Times article being another partisan attack against McCain.
Lets start with the elected official. In the wake of the Times article on McCain's eligibility, Ms McCaskill introduced legislation that would make it clear that Congress considers the children of military servicemembers born overseas to be "natural born" citizens. That's a nice gesture, I suppose, but McCaskill appears to have forgotten that Congress is not the branch of the government that is empowered to interpret the Constitution. I know that the Constitution has been largely left to rot for the last eight years, but I had retained some hope that some of our legislators might at least remember their job description.
Next, we've got the NBC news dude. In his report on the whole Times thing, Williams said:
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and his advisers are doing their best to brush aside questions -- raised in the liberal blogosphere -- about whether he is qualified under the Constitution to be president. But many legal scholars and government lawyers say it's a serious question with no clear answer.
I suppose that it would be tempting to assume that if someone in the blogosphere was questioning a Republican's qualifications to be President, it would be the liberals, but in this case the most of the culprits seem to have come from McCain's many Conservative opponents. If you look at the blogs that were writing about this whole "issue" prior to the Times article, you'll find supporters of Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and other miscellaneous wingnuts flailing wildly about "illegal alien" McCain's ineligibility. That's not to say that you won't find left-wing bloggers embracing the stupid on this one, but they seem to have been - by far - in the minority prior to the Times article coming out.
This brings us to the third (and final) group of people acting like idiots: the right-wingers who are now up in arms about the New York Times for daring to suggest that there might be a question here. First of all, McCain's people reportedly are taking this seriously enough that they had asked - before the Times article came out - former Solicitor General Ted Olsen to examine the issue for them. Like it or not, this is a legitimate news story. Second, where the hell were you when the very same attack was coming from within your own ranks? (In fact, in one noteworthy case it came from the same friggin' blog that's now whining about the Times.) I'm looking at you, Goldberg.
Look, as far as I'm concerned, there's no question about McCain's eligibility. You'd have to be the strictest of strict constructionists or an absolute bloody moron (but I repeat myself) to think that "natural born citizen" includes only those born on US soil, and not anyone else who has birthright citizenship. However, it is a question that has never actually been addressed, and it's understandable that there might be some attention given to the question. But that's really no excuse for so many people to act like fools.
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Hey, Mike, you mean "led" not "lead" in your post.
As to the question - I'm no lawyer, but it seems clear to me that "natural-born citizen" means anyone who had US citizenship from birth, which would include people born on military bases to US citizens, and also anyone born abroad whose US citizen parents got their US birth certificate from a US embassy or consulate.
A little while ago, Ed Brayton had people weigh in on this point (which they did with surprising civility, being especially - imho - patient with one particular repeat-commenter):
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/02/reading_this_may_cost_you_br…
Before Brayton's post, I had written a little on this point (since I was born on Guam, and would broadly fall into McCain's - and Gore's, and Goldwater's - position if I choose to ever run for the office), and have since updated my entry based on the discussions at Dispatches:
http://umlud.blogspot.com/2008/02/foreign-born-presidents.html
It's surprising to me that citizenship by descent should be seen as something other than "natural born" anyway (otherwise it's Mitt Romney who's the son of illegal immigrants). Of course, I find t very weird that the US has more than one class of citizens (but only when it comes to the Presidency).
So would a person, born of Puerto Rican parents in Puerto Rico be "natural born"? I remember back in 1996 there was a lot of talk about independence, and aides to a Republican senator (can't remember who any more) were saying that since citizenship for Puerto Ricans was granted by an act of Congress, Congress could also vote to strip them of their citizenship. No idea if that was true or not. But again, it made me think about different classes of citizenship.
Why is it a requirement that the President must be "natural" born ? It strikes me as being rather discriminatory.
Oh that's Goldberg's MO. Set up a strawman so you can attack "TEH LIBERULS" over it. He's rather pathetic, kind of a more obviously male Man Coulter wannabe.
This is completely wrong. All branches of government are empowered--in fact, required--to interpret the Constitution.
The judiciary is now considered to have plenary power of interpretation, but in the absence of a contrary judicial ruling of appropriate jurisdiction, the legislative and executive branches are free--in fact, as I said, are required--to interpret the Constitution as needed.
>> Why is it a requirement that the President must be "natural" born?
Matt -
Because if you allow the "unnatural born" to become president, you run the risk of bastards, aliens, clones, and stray embryonic stem cells ruling the nation.
"Because if you allow the "unnatural born" to become president, you run the risk of bastards, aliens, clones, and stray embryonic stem cells ruling the nation"
The current occupant of the White House qualifies as at least one of those.
"any child born abroad to citizens serving in the United States military would meet the constitutional requirement that anyone serving as president be a natural born citizen."
Does this mean that there are a bunch of 30-something Vietnamese who are now eligible?
On a related note, aren't we *all* born in a canal zone?
Why is it a requirement that the President must be "natural" born ? It strikes me as being rather discriminatory.
Posted by: Matt Penfold
When the Constitution was first drafted, there were still fears that the British could either invade again, or surreptitiously foster rebellion. Someone pointed out that a British citizen could theoretically be elected President, causing no end of trouble. Hence, that clause.
Didn't this get aired back when Mitt Romney's father George ran for president? Or didn't he stay in the race long enough for it to get settled?
What's really stupid is that Romney's supporters using this argument don't seem to remember that Mitt Romney's father (George Romney) faced the same sort of issue when he was running against Nixon for the Republican candidacy in 1968. George Romney was born in Mexico (not New Mexico), but it wasn't the question of his "natural born" status that was what made him drop out of the race.
That Mitt's supporters would flog this horse is disrespectful of their own candidate's family history. Effin' double-standards!
I had written about this topic last month (see URL below), and updated my entry based on the very well-and-patiently-discussed comments section of Ed Brayton's Dispatches ScienceBlog entry on this topic (see Archives: Feb 12, 2008).
Wouldn't the Canal Zone be considered as U.S. territory (at the time of his birth) in any case? That seems to make the issue moot.
What's annoyed me this election cycle has been some allegedly smart people repeatedly overlooking the plain language of the 12th Amendment, which says "no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States." First it was Warren Buffet, saying his lawyers (!) had looked into the matter, and seen no reason that Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn't be Vice President. Then it was Bill Clinton, answering a question about the possibility of his being his wife's veep, saying that they'd looked into it, but concluded that it would be against the "spirit" of the Constitution. No, it's against the letter, you dope. Not natural born = ineligible. Two full terms as President = ineligible.
So as soon as I posted that, of course, I had second thoughts. Bill Clinton is the man who parsed the meaning of "is", after all. Now, I think I've realized what his argument would be -- depending not on the 12th Amendment, but the 22nd (the term limits amendment). It says, "no person shall be elected to the office of President more than twice", but it says nothing about how many terms the President can actually serve. Devious, that is.
I still don't know what Buffet's lawyers were smoking.
Some of the right-wing blogs you link to would want to imply this because not many Republicans like McCain. It's not surprising at all who's trying to make this a story-- the Democrats want to face McCain in November, the old man will be easy for them to beat.
What about the first Presidents, born before there was a USA to be a "natural-born" citizen of? However they defined "natural-born", it had to be looser than many of the people frothing at the mouth over this today.
You'd have to be the strictest of strict constructionists or an absolute bloody moron (but I repeat myself) to think that "natural born citizen" includes only those born on US soil, and not anyone else who has birthright citizenship.
No. You don't need to be either of the above. You could simply be unfamiliar with how birthright citizenship works.
Does a child born to a civilian vacationing overseas have birthright citizenship? Is he a "natural born" citizen? If the answer to this isn't obvious to many people, then you can't condemn them for asking similar questions about presidential candidates.
*** No, it's against the letter, you dope. Not natural born = ineligible. Two full terms as President = ineligible. ***
Actually he's clearly no dope at all, and a legitimate legal argument has been made that he's eligible to be elected VP. The issue is that there are arguably two sets of requirements. Originally there were requirements to HOLD the office, which included age, citizenship and residency. To this were added a requirement to be ELECTED to the office, which is that you can't have been elected twice before.
The amendment says that Clinton is ineligible to be VP if he is ineligible to be President. But eligibility to hold the office is arguably not the same as eligible to be ELECTED to the office.
I agree (and so does Clinton) that it would be against the spirit of the Constution for him to run for VP. But be careful when you start throwing around "letter of" because the wording is not really clear.
*** It's not surprising at all who's trying to make this a story-- the Democrats want to face McCain in November, the old man will be easy for them to beat. ***
This is remarkably ignorant. Any Republican would be at a disadvantage, but every poll agrees that McCain is, by a huge margin, the strongest GOP candidate in November.
"This is remarkably ignorant... every poll agrees that McCain is, by a huge margin, the strongest GOP candidate in November."
The polls have been remarkably wrong lately, since New Hampshire. John Zogby is sweating right now. Part of that is also that McCain hasn't been the frontrunner for long at all, and he's the media's darling (check out what Glenn Greenwald has written about McCain and the media in the past month or so). The skeletons haven't come out of the closet with McCain yet. It took about six months for Giuliani to go from 45% frontrunner nationwide to 4% in Iowa.
McCain actually attracts some anti-war independents, but he won't for too long after they see him calling for us to be in Iraq for at least 100 more years. Thanks for calling me "remarkably ignorant," though; that must mean I'm doing something right. It actually took the New York Times to bring Republicans together over McCain. The Republican base really does not like him-- this is in large part why you see Republicans like Eisenhower's daughter going to Obama. His policies are similar to McCain's on many levels.
they appear to have been specifically excluded from citizenship:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthright_citizenship_in_the_United_State…
This has already been commented on quite thoroughly at Dispatches (if you want to read several well-reasoned comments - and rebuttals to less-well-reasoned confusion - go there):
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/02/reading_this_may_cost_you_br…
McCain is natural born because:
1. According to TITLE 8 (CH. 12, SubCh. III, Part I) Section 1401 of the US Code:
McCain's condition falls in either category a (if you consider the PCZ as under United States jurisdiction), categories c, d, or e (if you don't consider the PCZ as under US jurisdiction), or category g (if you know something contrary to the assumption of the US nationality of either of McCain's parents).
But wait, there's more!
2. According to TITLE 8 (CH. 12, SUBCH. III, Part I) Section 1403 of the US Code:
Based on the opinions from Supreme Court decisions based around the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, it has been determined that citizenship is either conferred at birth or through naturalization. (If you have citizenship conferred at birth, you don't need to become naturalized. If you need to be naturalized, you aren't a citizen at birth.)
Since McCain falls easily into several categories (with us needing to only know the nationality of one parent), McCain was a US citizen at birth. This is the closest definition of "natural born" viz the requirement for the Office of the President.
Firstly: How Bill Becomes President
1) Hillary wins the General Election
2) Bill runs for Congress
3) Bill becomes Speaker
4) Hillary has her VP assasinated
5) Hillary resigns the office of the President
6) President Bill pardons Hillary
Secondly: Bill DIDNT parse the meaning of "is". He was asked "is there a relationship..." Given that question, it is entirely understandable that a man under oath would want clarification of the question.
"No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President" -- Article II
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.overview.html
The Constitution is actually pretty brief. Every American, and anyone else interested in U.S. politics, should read it.
>> On a related note, aren't we *all* born in a canal zone?
Ringo - that reminds me of something I ran across when writing about whack job conspiracy theories. Check out this video (it's long, but it's worth watching!): http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread299689/pg1
(Start the video at about 3:00) The lecture begins: "There are two types of law in the world, civil law, which is the law of the land, and maritime admiralty, which is the law of the sea. Now, when you're born, you're launched, so to speak, out of your "mother's water" and "down the birth canal", and the "doc" has to sign a "birth certificate" (equivalent of a certificate of manifest, when a ship leaves the "dock"... ) and so you're therefore a "product of maritime admiralty law, and the Queen of England owns your ass."
Well, since McCain is now the GOP nominee, many of these questions are at rest.
On the other hand, since he'll likely never be elected to the presidency, presumably the question of his birth-citizenship is now moot.