[DoodleDawg]

This is when I usually post my boilerplate of Thomas Paine when he wrote in 1791 about "foreigners" and "half a foreigner" not being eligible to be President. I posit that "half a foreigner" is a person with one citizen parent and one non-citizen parent.

Except that he doesn't say that. The "foreigner; always half a foreigner, and always married to a foreigner" that Paine speaks of is an obvious reference the the British monarchy. The only time he links the presidency with citizenship is when he writes, "The presidency in America (or, as it is sometimes called, the executive) is the only office from which a foreigner is excluded, and in England it is the only one to which he is admitted. A foreigner cannot be a member of Parliament, but he may be what is called a king."

[Political Junkie Too]

He makes the comparison to imply that we are the opposite. You conveniently stopped short of the next sentence "In England the person who exercises prerogative is often a foreigner; always half a foreigner, and always married to a foreigner. He is never in full natural or political connection with the country..."

In context, it is clear that Paine is juxtaposing the open British monarchy with the closed American executive, "open" meaning accessible to "foreigners" and "half a foreigner," where the American executive is closed to both. One cannot be in "full natural... connection with the country" if one parent is not a citizen.

-PJ