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However, after sleeping on it, I’m wondering if it didn’t also have something to do with some sort of “age of accountability.”

After all, if the minimum age of a President is 35yrs old, and you subtract the 14yrs residency requirement (assuming a continuous residency), you hit the magic age of 21-years-old.

That was the voting age back then. So, I’m thinking it might have something to do with that.

Aha. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a winner on my 14 year question.

Now there's no proof of this, because unlike some of the discussions on terms of Senators and Representatives, as far as I can tell, they didn't leave a record of the discussion. If I'm wrong on that, someone feel free to correct me. But I'm pretty sure I'm right.

Now we are in the realm of speculation here. Because we don't know for certain. But doesn't the number 14 seem a bit odd to you? Again, why not 15?

But if you subtract 14 from 35, you get 21. Which is exactly the legal age of adulthood in those days.

Now. Consider the historical context. On July 4, 1776, a bunch of people got together and they wrote this thing called a Declaration of Independence. And that document presumed to speak for every person on the North American continent, and to say, "We're done with you. We're starting our own blasted country."

Only it didn't. All of the people had been English citizens all of their lives, and there were quite a few who wanted to stay that way.

And more than a few of these people packed up their children and moved to England.

But what about those little children? They were born here. Did they not have any say?

By the time of the Constitutional Convention, some of those children were 11 years old. Well, what if they wanted to come back to America? Some who went to England did, and threw in their lot, forever, with us. Like William Rawle. He was one of those. His parents were Loyalists. He had come back to America in 1783, four years before the Convention, and was a bright young man who had been meeting with George Washington and Ben Franklin right there in Philadelphia, and talking about important things like... how to encourage people to come over here and cast their lot in with us.

Hmmm.

So what rights did these children have, who were carried away from America by their parents and raised in some place like England?

A later Court would say that such children had always had at least the right to come back here and be Americans, on reaching adulthood.

I submit to you - now this is speculation, mind you - I submit to you that the Framers likely had these people in mind when they wrote the Presidential eligibility clause.

They wanted to encourage immigration of good people from Europe, while avoiding being taken over by British royalty. That much is known.

They actually had before them at least one known example of a bright young man who had come back from England and thrown his lot in with us.

I submit that they quite likely had in mind the children born here of British loyalists and carried off to England to be raised in England, when they wrote that clause. And they wanted to attract such people back, and so they specifically wrote the Constitution in such a way that such people could be raised in a foreign country until they were 21 years of age, and then as young adults come back here and precisely on reaching the age of 35 years, they would know that they could aspire to the highest office in the land.

If this is correct, then it means that the Framers of the Constitution specifically intended that a person born here could be carried abroad as a child, spend his entire growing up and formative years raised in a foreign country, and then decide he really wants to be an American, and come back here - even though he was raised in a foreign country - and live here until age 35, and run for President.

Well. So much for "foreign influence."

But let's set that aside for a moment, and just look at the number of years from a different perspective.

Fourteen years. That's not very long, is it?

So you're telling me that a guy could be 54 years old, and run for President of the United States, and have spent up to 40 of those years living in some other country.

Well, that's what the Framers of the Constitution said. It's not my idea. It's theirs.

So whether I am right about the kids-being-raised-in-other-countries thing or not, the whole meme that they wanted to pull out all the stops to avoid the faintest taint of foreign influence is simply false. And that is shown, very loudly, by their actions.

Yes, they were concerned about the Duke of Derrydoo or someplace swooping in here and buying up the Presidency.

But they don't seem to have have cared a fig whether someone born here spent most of his life abroad. And they don't seem to have cared a fig that Thomas Jefferson was a dual citizen with France, while serving with President.

So the whole birther meme is just false. It doesn't honor the Founders. It doesn't honor their intentions. It's all about what these people think the Founders ought to have wanted. And not about what they really did want.

Gee, these people are better Founders than the Founders. They are smarter Framers than the Framers.

It's too bad we didn't have these people around when the country was being founded. Because Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton... these people were obviously just a bunch of hacks who didn't know what they were doing.

Maybe someone can invent a time machine and send some of these people back to the 1700s, so we can all benefit from their wisdom.