WASHINGTON — The question has nagged at the parents of Americans born outside the continental United States for generations: Dare their children aspire to grow up and become president? In the case of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the issue is becoming more than a matter of parental daydreaming.
Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.
Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.
Almost since those words were written in 1787 with scant explanation, their precise meaning has been the stuff of confusion, law school review articles, whisper campaigns and civics class debates over whether only those delivered on American soil can be truly natural born. To date, no American to take the presidential oath has had an official birthplace outside the 50 states.
“There are powerful arguments that Senator McCain or anyone else in this position is constitutionally qualified, but there is certainly no precedent,” said Sarah H. Duggin, an associate professor of law at Catholic University who has studied the issue extensively. “It is not a slam-dunk situation.”
Mr. McCain was born on a military installation in the Canal Zone, where his mother and father, a Navy officer, were stationed. His campaign advisers say they are comfortable that Mr. McCain meets the requirement and note that the question was researched for his first presidential bid in 1999 and reviewed again this time around.
But given mounting interest, the campaign recently asked Theodore B. Olson, a former solicitor general now advising Mr. McCain, to prepare a detailed legal analysis. “I don’t have much doubt about it,” said Mr. Olson, who added, though, that he still needed to finish his research. More on the story.
1 comment:
This is a topic the US has really never had to deal with. Now yes we have US bases overseas but their not declared US soil. I have friends who were born in Germany by Military families. Now they have two citizenship's. Keau Reeves has two citizenship's. One has to look to Canada for the answer. When a Dutch King/Queen when to Canada as they ran from the War. The rules state only a Royal born on Dutch soil could rule. Now the Canadian President ruled that the home the Dutch Queen lied was Dutch soil. Years later a daughter was born as the King was dead and the Mother was ill. Could the Dutch princess go home and rule her country. Yes still today the home the princess was born is Dutch territory forever.
John McCain is not a natural born citizen of the United States by birth. I look for this to open the door for others in the future to attack that issue with success if McCain becomes President. Everyone word means something and the Founding Fathers knew exactly why they put the word natural in the law.
I find it strange how Republicans want to sent immigrants child born in the USA back to a country that's not theirs. I guess this is the Bush Law.
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