“If my children cannont aspire to the presidency as their father can, then my children are second-class citizens.”
I reject the notion that denying children one little, tiny opportunity makes them second class citizens. Of course, any law that defines people different divides people into different classes, in a technical sense. For instance, marriage law makes married people a seperate class from single people. Children are a seperate class from adults.
It is so unlikely that any particular child will ever be elected president that restricting them from doing so almost certainly won’t make a difference in their lives.
But that is exactly what it does.
Two children born on the same day at Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego, California, USA. One child can aspire to the presidency if he desires. The other child, an American citizen, born and raised in the United States, cannot because his mother was an immigrant. The second child, because his mother immigrated here, is a de facto second-class citizen who does not have the same freedoms, rights and privileges as the first child despite the fact both children were born in the exact same place.
Doesn't sound very American, does it? Because it's not.
And yet that is exactly what we are debating, and why the Founders put requirements in place for the job.