Litigious Ridiculous

In Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution states that "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." Well it seems pretty clear that you have to have been born a citizen of the U.S. to run for president. Too bad for Governor Schwarzenegger. But apparently there is some ambiguity in interpretation. I remember as a child reading this passage of the Constitution in elementary school and being taught that I could not ever run for President of the United States. I was born a U.S. citizen to a mother who was a natural-born citizen (though my father was not a U.S. citizen), but I was not born in the United States or on U.S. soil . But this is where the ambiguity of the passage seems to confuse some people; Senator John McCain was not born in the U.S., but he was born on U.S. soil in a section of Panama then controlled by the U.S. government. I wonder if he had won the presidency if people on the Left would be pursuing legal cases to bar his installment as President?

Well, two separate individuals have pursued legal cases to bar the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, though these cases appear, thankfully, to be getting very little traction as reported in today's Los Angeles Times. In one case, Leo C. Donofrio of East Brunskwick, N.J. did in fact sue against both McCain and Obama. In another case Philip J. Berg of Lafayette, Pa. sued against Obama specifically. Of interest to me is that, in my view, where McCain might occupy something of the muddy ground I occupy in my own birth location, Obama's birth certificate clearly locates him in Hawaii, when it was already a state in the United States. While both cases have been largely ignored because you can't just bring a suit unless you can prove personal harm, it still gives me pause: what did the founding authors mean by "natural born Citizen"? Surely, all historical legal precedents recognize Obama to be one because he was born on U.S. soil, which has always been enough to make someone a citizen. You add to that the fact that his mother was a natural-born citizen, and you would think his citizenship should be unassailable. That's the beauty of the U.S. as opposed to a country like Kuwait where you and your children could all have been born there, and you would still not be citizens. Why is it that people in this country need to persist in imagining U.S. citizens to be something they have never been (except in the case of the original Americans who predate Plymouth and Jamestown), people whose ancestors have all lived and died on this land? What does it mean to be a citizen of the U.S. now or ever?

I guess because of my own background, I think that being a U.S. citizen is an enforced choice. Most of us have no choice but to be here, but some of us do actively choose it. Putting aside the specific desires of some to make Obama an absolute other, a non-citizen, what is the deeper desire to disinherit those who think differently about being a U.S. citizen? Whose very ancestry may show up the complexity of calling oneself a citizen of the U.S.?

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Image of Article II, Section 1 taken from the U.S. National Archives website.