It's really not something I've thought about that much. I'm not in a position to rewrite the Presidential eligibility clause, so my opinion on what it "ought" to be doesn't really matter.
( insert ten paragraphs of lawyer-like dancing around the question here )
All of that is just off the top of my head, and if I had months to think about it, I might change some of it.
Jeff, you just posted 650+ words in ten paragraphs, and completely avoided answering my very simple question. After posting tens of thousands of words on this subject on Free Republic, you honestly want me to believe that you "haven't thought that much" about what reasoning the Framers used to set the citizenship qualifications for the office of President?
You're only fooling yourself, Jeff. No one reading here, believes that for a second. This subject consumes you. It's your obsession. Oh yes, you have thought about all this, long and hard.
You danced all around my simple question, because you know that applying the most rudimentary reasoning to it, can only produce one answer. That answer is poison to your argument, but it's the only logical conclusion. You can't say it in public, because if you do, everything you've invested in your position on this subject will be lost.
I'll give you one more chance to answer the question. Giving any response but a straight and simple answer, is automatic forfeiture of the entire argument:
Which pedigree of citizenship would you logically consider most likely to produce the kind of person who would remain unerringly loyal to your people, in the office of President:
A. A citizen born in a foreign country to parents who were also born there?
B. A citizen born in this country to parents who were born in a foreign land?
C. A citizen born in this country to one parent born here, and the other born elsewhere?
D. A citizen born in this country to parents who were also born here?
Applying simple deductive reasoning, tell me which of those conditions of citizenship is most likely to produce the sort of loyalty one would want in a national Chief Executive.
I gave you the straightest, most honest answer conceivable.
I even stretched to try and come up with some thoughts on an issue I frankly have not thought very much about.
Have I thought about the meaning of “natural born citizen” as understood by our Founders, Framers and legal experts throughout history? Absolutely.
Have I thought about what qualifications I would personally assign to the job? Not very much. I’m not in the business of second-guessing the Founding Fathers. I’m more in the business of supporting what they did, because for the most part, it has worked and worked well.
If you can’t accept an honest and straightforward answer, that’s your problem.
By the way, it’s clear that the Founding Fathers and Framers didn’t share your nannyish view that the PEOPLE had to have their hands held and had to be absolutely prohibited from ever having the possibility of electing someone like Ted Cruz whose father was (gasp) not a United States citizen when Ted was born.
If they had held the nanny view you espouse, then they would NEVER have simply specified that the President had to be a “natural born citizen,” since that term NEVER excluded those born on US soil of non-citizen immigrant parents.
If they had held the nanny view you espouse, then they would NEVER have specified that the President only had to reside for 14 years of his life in the United States in order to be eligible to be President.
And if they had held the nanny view that you espouse, then they would NEVER have tolerated 3 of our first 4 Presidents holding dual citizenship at the exact time that they were serving as President of the United States.
So whatever they believed, it wasn’t what YOU believe.
And given the choice between sticking with some guy on the internet, or sticking with the Framers of the Constitution, I’m sticking with the Framers of the Constitution.