How this has gone beyond our notice (indeed, not just our notice, but the media's and the country's notice) that Senator McCain was not born within the United States is inconceivable to me. According to msnbc.com, McCain's people seem to be going as far as to suppress comment or debate on this (far from small) detail, hoping that if he is elected, the court would be very hesitant to strip him of his position upon a major court case. This behavior is like that of a high school senior who has just realized that he has forgotten half an English credit or a PE credit in the mere months before his graduation - "Maybe no one will notice," he says to himself. "Once I'm out of here, they'll simply be glad to have another one out of their hair - if I ignore it, there won't be any consequences and I'll be allowed to go on my own merry way." NOPE - this kind of reasoning is NOT going to work on a national level, not when it concerns the future leader of one of the world's strongest, most influential countries in history.
Which brings me to the United States Constitution itself - what does it actually say about the parameters of an individual with concern to the head honcho of the white house? According to USConstitution.net, which contains the full text of the US Constitution,
"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; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."
The first issue at hand is the term 'natural born citizen', a term that could mean either simply a citizen born physically within the borders of the United States, or a citizen born to United States citizens. (In which case, citizenship would be bestowed on the child because of the citizenship of the parents.) In the first case, the candidate would manditorily have been born on US soil, within one of the 50 states, and in the second case, the candidate could have been born anywhere and been given expatriate status along with the gift of citizenship to the United States of America. In short, the interpretation of these three simple words will determine whether McCain is ineligible or he may move on to the next argument presented with this constitutional passage.
Secondly, the conjunction 'or' could be seen in either the additional sense or the synonymous sense. On one hand, 'or' could mean that the president must be a natural born citizen, but if not a natural born citizen, it will suffice if the individual is a citizen of the United States. On the other hand, this could mean that the president must be a natural born citizen, which is synonymous to a citizen of the united states. If decided in the previous paragraph that 'natural born citizen' meant 'born within one of the 50 states', then the first option concerning 'or' would be the only logical meaning, since not all US citizens are 'natural born citizens'. If the second meaning of 'or' is taken with the first option of 'natural born citizen', it would be redundant to include both 'natural born citizen' and 'citizen of the united states', as the two are synonymous according to the predetermined definition. The same redundancy is applied to the assumption that 'natural born citizen' means simply a citizen of the united states, which includes an individual born within the 50 states AND the individual born to US citizens. Both interpretations of the word 'or' would be redundant because (in the first case, in which 'or' is additional) because the two are synonymous ('natural born citizen' = 'citizen of the united states') and because (in the second case, in which 'or' is synonymous) 'natural born citizen' includes any form of 'citizen of the united states'.
Therefore, the only conclusion one can make is assuming that 'natural born citizen' means that the individual was born on US soil, not in the territories or neutral regions, and that the use of 'or' is additional. This means that McCain IS eligible to be the next president of the United States because he is included in the 'Citizen of the United States' part of the constitution.
Ah, the joys of being an English/Logic nerd!
Thanks for reading!
-AB
...but yes, he is eligible. McCain's parents were both U.S. citzens at the time of his birth, and is thus a "natural born citizen" undet the principle of jus sanguinis.
Here is a more detailed explanation from FactCheck.Org.
TTFN,
percivale
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John McCain is in fact eligible to be President because his parents are citizens making him a "natural born citizen". He was not born in the contiguous United States but he was born in the Panama Canal zone and if someone is born on an American Military base it is considered "American Soil." I'm not sure about this, but the Constitution does not specify if adopted children from abroad can run for president. So are they allowed to?
John McCain is in fact eligible to be President because his parents are citizens making him a "natural born citizen". He was not born in the contiguous United States but he was born in the Panama Canal zone and if someone is born on an American Military base it is considered "American Soil." I'm not sure about this, but the Constitution does not specify if adopted children from abroad can run for president. So are they allowed to?
McCain is eligible. His parents were both citizens, and I'm pretty sure he was born on a US military base.
Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
You ask this question, but you already knew the answer. Yes McCain is eligible, otherwise he wouldn't have made it this far in the election process. I don't think his campaign is trying to hide this, because he is a natural-born citizen, there is nothing to hide. It may not be a well known fact, I for one did not know that McCain was born an a military base abroad, but I don't think anyone is hiding it.
There is a lot of speculation, based on an assertion made by his Grandmother that Obama was actually born in Kenya and registered fraudulently in Hawaii as a live birth. He has claimed that he was born in two different hospitals and has yet to produce anything that looks like a valid birthcertificate. USA law at that time did not confir him with automatic citizenship if he was indeed born outside the country and he certainly would not meet the qualification for natural born.
Further, his mother remarried and he moved to Indonesia and his step-father registered him in school as an Indonesian citizen. Indonesian law at the time did not allow dual citizenship so Obama would have had to renounce his USA citizenship. Presumably his parients as guardians did this for him.
Later, after he was an adult, Obama traveled to Pakistan using his Indonesian citizenship and his Indonesian passport. There is no record that he ever filed the necessary paperwork to reclaim his USA citizenship and be re-naturalized as a USA citizenship. Such naturalization paperwork would make him eligible for the postion of Senator but would not meet the Constitutional requirements for President.
It is questionable whether Obama is even a citizen and eligible for his current role as Senator let alone to be President. There was a lawsuit filed by a disgruntled Hillary supporter that is currently making its way through the Courts. My understanding is that Obama has been ordered by a judge to produce these documents.
It will be interesting to see if this stuff holds up. I guess if he wins he would be forced to step-down and we would end up with President Biden and VP Pelosi.