The destructive politics of candidate birthplace: One way in which I totally support Obama

When you wish for an October surprise, be careful what you wish for...

There's buzz about an "October surprise" that Barack Obama was allegedly not born in the U.S. and has never become a legal U.S. citizen and therefore is not legally a Senator and could not be President.

Here is a video about this:

And here is a website that gets into excruciating detail.

Believe it or not, the same concern has been expressed about McCain -- the New York Times covered the question, and here is a forum post taking the question seriously.

My response is: Knock it off, people.

It’s a technicality...I suspect if you held a vote on this birthplace requirement today, a reasonably large majority would overturn it.

Where Obama was born has absolutely no bearing on his ability or right to hold these offices other than the fact that there are a couple of rules about it. Rules enacted at the Presidential level without any particular debate or explanation of the reasoning. John Dean wrote about this in 2004, calling for an end to the provision. Here is his description of how it came about:

No one knows exactly what the nation's Founders had in mind when they wrote that "No person except a natural born Citizen … shall be eligible to the Office of President." (Emphasis added.)

However, the "natural born" Clause's origins have been traced to a July 25, 1787 letter from John Jay to the presiding officer of the Constitutional Convention, George Washington. Jay wrote, "Permit me to hint, whether it would be wise and seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Commander in Chief of the American army shall not be given to nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen."

The hint clearly made sense to General Washington. While there was no debate, this presidential qualification was soon introduced by the drafting Committee of Eleven, and then adopted without any discussion by the Constitutional Convention.

Article II has a number of absolute qualifications: It also requires that presidents be at least thirty-five years of age and a United States resident for fourteen years. Accordingly, the natural born citizenship requirement has been treated as a similar absolute. And this requirement has remained the law of the land, notwithstanding the fact that the Founders' fear of undue foreign influence soon proved itself baseless.

One could argue that pursuing this is somehow legitimate in light of the fact that Obama used technicalities to get all his opponents thrown out of his first political race so he could run unopposed. I think it's a very bad idea to further the ways in which Presidential politics resemble "the Chicago Way".

The proof of the unworkableness of a birthplace requirement is that we currently have two Presidential candidates who both, potentially, can be challenged based on their birth place. It’s ridiculous and destructive.

Personally, I just can’t support pursuing an avenue like this that has nothing to do with Obama’s qualifications or the vote of the people. Denying the majority the candidate they chose (if they do choose him) through such a path is wrong and dangerous. The backlash may be unimaginable.

I will support and fight for either candidate if they win the election and then are subjected to a legal challenge on this basis.

To win through this kind of technicality is to lose, and lose big time.

HT: Bookworm...

UPDATE: While the commenters at Bookworm aren't buying my argument, I'm glad to see Hot Air debunk the general claim about Obama. However, as is hopefully clear from the above, my argument is not based on the validity of the claim itself, but on the idea that it wouldn't matter even if it were true...