Thursday, February 28, 2008
McCain not an American?
In its own variation of fair and balanced, the NY Times lays out a specious argument against the citizenship of the presumptive Republican candidate. Aside from the fact that I was under the impression that this sort of reporting about Republicans was against the Code Journalissmo, there are plenty of legitimate reasons for keeping St John out of the White House without making stuff up. Still, it does raise up some dust of confusion.
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.My reading of the Constitution would have to allow St John to be president unless he was born by Caesarian and not naturally, but what do I know.
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.
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