But suppose someone in circumstances like yours does have a Dad who decides he wants to be involved in his son's life and takes said son back to Germany and raises him there. Would you then consider him natural born or want a non-American (having been raised in Germany) occupying the Oval Office???
I would reiterate that no one (including natural born citizens 10 generations long descending from revolutionary war veterans) have a RIGHT to be President. Its an honor, but it is not a right.
Our founders knew this and imposed strict restrictions knowing full well there would be the occasional exception and unusual cases such as yours. It doesn't change the fact that safeguards must be put in place to protect us from other unusual cases that would bring harm to the nation.
I really didn’t mean to imply that my son had the right to be president. So, first off, I apologize for not being clear.
In the second case, if the father wanted to take the child to another country for upbringing, I do not think that would preclude someone from running for president legally. Lots of people are raised overseas (sometimes on military bases, sometimes when their parents are in jobs overseas) and I do not think that means they are necessarily un-American.
What about someone who went to school overseas for a short time (Bill Clinton/Oxford)? Or John Quincy Adams (son of a founder, and 6th president himself) who was educated and worked in Europe from the age of 11 until he was 18? Obviously people who were involved in the Revolution did not feel that education and time spent living abroad disqualified someone from being president.
I think, looking at all of the overseas postings so many of the founders enjoyed (John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson to name a few), to say that they were virulently anti-European is to look through a prism of our modern times and put modern notions on people whose world was very different.
Natural born either occurs at birth or it doesn’t. How about someone who was born in the US and lived overseas for a few years, even went to school overseas, and then ran for president when they were seventy. Do those years overseas count more than the rest of the life spent in the US?