You may not have picked up on these political smoke signals yet if you live outside the Beltway or you are not fully engaged with 2012 Republican presidential politics.
While there are many candidates running for the GOP nomination, there is one name that keeps coming up as the favorite vice presidential nominee.
 Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. |
That would be Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I really, really like Marco Rubio. I think he is a great senator. I think he’d make a great governor of Florida. I think he is a forceful and articulate voice for the future. He would even be a great president or vice president – except for one fatal flaw: He is not constitutionally eligible for those offices.
I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings to those excited about Rubio as a vice presidential running mate or future president. But those are facts – facts the Republican Party, and Marco Rubio himself, would be foolish to ignore.
“Wait a minute,” you might say, “I heard Rubio was born in Florida. Doesn’t that make him a ‘natural born citizen’ as the Constitution requires?”
No, it does not. Sadly, Barack Obama’s eligibility charade over the last three years has effectively dumbed down the actual meaning of that important phrase. Today, you have people like Sen. Dianne Feinstein and even Republican members of Congress writing to their constituents claiming that Obama is eligible because he was “born in the USA.” That, however, is not the standard, has never been the standard and must not be the lowered standard for future candidates for president or vice president.
Only two offices in the United States require candidates to be “natural born citizens.” That phrase has been well-understood for more than 200 years to mean the child of two U.S. citizen parents at the time of birth – wherever that birth might have taken place. It was even the standard the U.S. Senate used as recently as 2008 in proclaiming the eligibility of Sen. John McCain, who, as most Americans know, was not born in the USA.
Obama does not fit that description. He doesn’t even pretend to fit that description. Even the controversial “birth certificates” he has released to the public do not make that claim. Instead, his supporters have tried to amend the Constitution by fiat. Instead of questioning this drastic change in interpretation, the media have driven with an unprecedented and hysterical campaign of viciousness and vacuous reporting.
But none of that changes the facts on the ground, and the Republicans would be ill-advised to breach the Constitution by actively participating in it. Not only would it be wrong, it would be impractical. While Republicans in Washington may not want to blow the whistle on Obama and enforce the Constitution, their constituents most definitely do.
Again, I like Rubio, but he’s not eligible – even though he’d like to think he is under the redefinitions of “natural born citizen” by the press and the Washington elite.
He can run for any other office – and I’d support him enthusiastically. He just can’t be vice president or president. Neither, by the way, can the very adept governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal. He’s in the same boat. He was born in the USA to parents who were not yet citizens. By all accounts, he’s a great man. He’s doing a good job as governor. I would support him for any office except president or vice president because the clear meaning of the Constitution is that you must be the child of U.S. citizens at the time of your birth.
It may not seem fair, but we’re talking about the office of the presidency here. Ordinary “citizens” can seek any other office they wish, assuming they fit the other qualifications. But the founders had their reasons for this special category of “natural born citizen” for the presidency and vice presidency – and they remain very sound and, like it or not, the law of the land.
The fact that Rubio and Jindal were both born in America undoubtedly makes them “native-born” citizens, but not “natural-born” citizens.
As Joe Kovacs reported in WND in May, the founders’ chief concern, as demonstrated in a 1787 letter from John Jay to George Washington, was that the commander in chief not have dual loyalties.
Jay, who later became president of the Continental Congress and the first Supreme Court chief justice, 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 definition of natural-born citizen approved by the first U.S. Congress can be seen in the Naturalization Act of 1790, which regarded it as a child born of two American parents. The law, specifying that a natural-born citizen need not be born on U.S. soil, stated: “The children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States.”
The first U.S. Congress included 20 delegates to the Constitutional Convention. Among the 20 were eight members of the Committee of Eleven that drafted the Constitution’s natural-born citizen clause. While the act was repealed five years later, it, nevertheless, represented the will and clear understanding of the Congress that the U.S. not be led by someone with dual loyalties.
Rep. John Bingham of Ohio, a principal framer of the 14th Amendment, affirmed in a discussion in the House on March 9, 1866, that a natural-born citizen is “born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty.”
“The Law of Nations,” a 1758 work by Swiss legal philosopher Emmerich de Vattel, was read by many of the founders and informed their understanding of law later established in the Constitution.
Vattel specified that a natural-born citizen is born of two citizens and made it clear that the father’s citizenship was a loyalty issue. Vattel writes: “The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. … In order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.”
Am I concerned that Rubio has loyalties to Cuba that compromise him? Absolutely not. Am I concerned that Jindal has loyalties to India that compromise him? Absolutely not. But I believe they are both technically ineligible to serve as president. Period. End of story.
Now, I’m not saying that everyone agrees with my interpretation of the Constitution. But I am saying that enough Americans do agree to make the choice of Rubio or Jindal counterproductive to a GOP ticket in 2012 – especially after the fiasco of Obama. And I don’t want to see the Constitution dumbed down and effectively amended extra-legally.
