Well, sure he's made that claim. What he hasn't done (as others in this debate have) is to make a convincing argument for why the Framers would have considered that to be a sufficient citizenship pedigree for the office of President.I never started from, "This is what I think the Founders were thinking."
I started from, "This is what the Founders and Framers said and did."
You can't conclude what the Founders said and did by imagining what they were thinking. You can, on the other hand, eventually figure out what they were thinking by what they said and did.
But if you want to know what they said and did, you have to look at what they said and did.
Actually, if you want to know what they were THINKING, you have to look at what they said and did. You can't just imagine it. You can't just say, "Hey, this is what the Founders would have done, based on what YOU would do, or what you think they ought to have done.
The Founders and Framers didn't watch TV. They didn't read the same books you and I read. They read different books. They engaged in different discussions. They had a different relationship to the world. They were starting a country, not looking back on the founding of a country with 226 years of hindsight.
They lived in an entirely different world.
There were no cars. No television. No radio. No international phone calls. To travel from this country to any other took weeks, any way you cut it. If you went overland to the wilds of the north, it took weeks to get there. If you went overland to the wilds of the south, it took weeks to get there. If you went over the sea to England or France, that took weeks as well.
Part of the issue is that there was no such thing as international tourism in those days. Things like "anchor babies" were unconceived of, and inconceivable. Perhaps if they had considered anchor babies and 300,000 people traveling from London to New York (and vice versa) every single month, they would have made a different decision.
And perhaps not. They obviously were not very concerned at all about completely eliminating "all possible foreign influence," as the rules they set up for Presidential eligibility made it perfectly possible for someone to be born a natural born citizen (by whatever measure you want to use), live his entire life to adulthood in England or France, having spent his entire formative and educational years there, then return to the United States at age 21, and be elected United States President at age 35, having spent 60% of his life in a foreign country, and only 40% of his life here.
Or, theoretically, that same person could have spent the great majority of his life (say 40 out of 54 years) in foreign countries, and still been elected President.
In that case, he would have spent nearly 75% of his life overseas, and only about 25% in the United States. And still, the Framers of the Constitution tell us, such a person could be eligible to be elected President.
So if they weren't trying to eliminate "all possibility of foreign influence," what were they guarding against?
Well, first, they wanted the person to have some significant attachment to the country. Being born here, or otherwise being born a US citizen, guaranteed that, even if the person was educated abroad.
But most Constitutional scholars seem to think one of the primary motivations was simply to prevent ADULT royalty from some place like England from swooping in and buying up the Presidency with lots of royal glitz and money.
But... but... you say. Such a person could have just come over here, and had a child, and 50 years later, that child could have become President!
That's not necessarily true. Such a child would have had some real doubts cast on his eligibility, since children of FOREIGN ROYALTY were one of the historical EXCEPTIONS to the rule of natural born citizenship.
Even if it was accepted that the child was a natural born American citizen, who would do that? Who would leave the cushy comfort of their native country and come over here, and wait FORTY OR FIFTY YEARS (by which time they would almost certainly have been dead themselves) for the CHANCE that their child MIGHT grow up to be President?
NOBODY.
And as far as we can tell, nobody ever did.
So the rule they adopted was a perfectly sensible one. It fulfilled the purpose they set out for it.
You can say that in retrospect they might have adopted a different rule. "We're going to have anchor babies in 200 years, so let's say that citizen parents are also required."
But what they MIGHT have done, and what they actually DID, are two entirely different things.
And what they did made perfect sense to them.
To travel from this country to any other took weeks, any way you cut it. If you went overland to the wilds of the north, it took weeks to get there. If you went overland to the wilds of the south, it took weeks to get there. If you went over the sea to England or France, that took weeks as well.Part of the issue is that there was no such thing as international tourism in those days. Things like "anchor babies" were unconceived of, and inconceivable. Perhaps if they had considered anchor babies and 300,000 people traveling from London to New York (and vice versa) every single month, they would have made a different decision.
Nonsense. We have a letter from Monroe regarding a British "Anchor Baby" from the period. We have a newspaper article purportedly from James Madison, regarding another. They were not only conceivable, we have proof that one, possibly two founders dealt with this exact issue. And what did they say about it? In the one case Monroe claimed the man was NOT a citizen, and in the other, The man's American citizenship was only recognized if the Law of South Carolina bestowed it upon him.
You just refuse to see these two examples for what they are. Proof that the founders were aware of "anchor babies" and that they rejected the idea.
James Monroe in a letter from Paris, July 4, 1795.
The jealousy which is entertained by this government of the commerce carried on by our countrymen between the ports of this republic and those of England has latterly shewn itself in a more impleasant form than heretofore and I am fearful it will not yet produce some more disagreeable effect. A Mr Eldred was lately apprehended at Marseilles and sent here under guard upon a charge of having given intelligence to the British of some movement in the French fleet. Upon inquiry I found he had my passport granted too upon the most substantial documents proving him to be an American citizen; but I likewise found that in truth he was not an American citizen, for although born in America yet he was not there in the course of our revolution but in England, nor had he been there since. From what I hear of him, he is not a person of mischevious disposition nor one who would be apt to commit the offence charged upon him, but yet I do not see how I can officially interfere in his behalf, for when once a principle is departed from, it ceases to be a principle. More latterly I was requested by the commissary of foreign affairs to prohibit our consuls from granting passports, which was immediately done. I was afterwards requested by him to furnish a list of the Americans actually in Paris, and to render a like list every decade of those who should in the interim arrive, and which was promised and will be punctually executed. I herewith send you a copy of my instructions to the Consuls and correspondence with the commissary on this subject.
The founders were not idiots.