You are completely off base here. Unlike Americans at present the Americans that founded our Nation were passionate about these issue and their letters and speeches have been retained. I don’t know how you can even say the things you do when there is so much proof that the issue was hotly debated. Just think about why only the Presidency requires NBC status, why add another state of citizenship if the distinction had no meaning to the Founders? We have records that explain exactly why they restricted the office of the Presidency.
George Washington received a letter from John Jay, the future first Chief Justice of the United States, suggesting:
[W]hether it would not be wise & seasonable to provide a . . . strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Command in chief of the american [sic] army shall not be given to, nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen.
As Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution declared: “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 ….” (Italics added) A loophole for themselves, as Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story wrote 46 years later, was created “out of respect to those distinguished revolutionary patriots, who were born in a foreign land, and yet had entitled themselves to high honours in their adopted country. A positive exclusion of them from the office would have been unjust to their merits, and painful to their sensibilities.”
This from the same man who in the very next paragraph of his famous “Commentaries on the Constitution,” goes on to say that the need to exclude the foreign-born was so obvious as to be unchallenged by any “sound statesman. It cuts off all chances for ambitious foreigners, who might otherwise be intriguing for the office; and interposes a barrier against those corrupt interferences of foreign governments in executive elections.”
When someone fights so hard not to believe the evidence of history or not to apply logic to understand its lessons I can only believe there is a choice involved.
Good post, well said
The only thing that I have added to any of this is that I think we as voters have an obligation to consider these issues when we vote. I don't think we should vote for electors who may vote for someone we believe to be unqualified. Qualifications are important.
I will also add the fact the limitation on the eligibility for the Office of the President of the United States was actually a gigantic liberalization on such restrictions. Under English and British law up to the time of the adoption of the Constitution, a person born abroad with citizen parents was not eligible to hold any English or British position as an officer. During the drafting of the Constitution the continuation of the historic restrictions to eligibility against persons born abroad were considered for a variety of U.S. offices, including the Senate and House of Representatives; but they were all eventually rejected with the singular exception of the Office of the President.