The Supreme Court has ruled that a person born in the U.S. is a citizen at birth. Likewise a person born overseas of two parents who are U.S. citizens. If there is a difference between that and a natural born citizen then where is that difference defined? Where does the law detail three classifications of citizenship? Surely one of you can point so some authoritative source that gives that answer? Can't you?
Americans of the founding generation were extremely distrustful of executive authority. By the time of the Constitutional Convention, however, difficulties undergone during and after the War for Independence had convinced public-spirited men that a national executive was necessary, but they approached the problem cautiously.
At least one-third of the delegates favored a plural executive in the interests of safety. The others endorsed a single executive, but only because George Washington would obviously be the first President. But Washington could not serve forever, and the delegates groped almost desperately to devise a means of choosing his successors. The search took up more time, more of the debates, than any other subject.
The greatest fear was of corrupt influences upon the election, particularly from abroad. Since the time of Louis XIV, every major European power had developed a secret service. The damage that such agencies could do was vivid in the American imagination, and it was not imaginary.
The horrible example of Poland was commonly cited. Poland had an elected monarch, and only 15 years earlier, in 1772, the secret services of Austria, Prussia and Russia had rigged the election of their own candidate, whereupon Poland was partitioned and divided among those three powers.
As Charles Pinckney, a delegate from South Carolina, put it, the danger was that ''we shall soon have the scenes of Polish Diets and elections re-acted here, and in not many years, the fate of Poland may be that of United America.''
Fear of foreign influence was pandemic. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts even wanted to prevent foreigners from becoming citizens, taking the position that naturalized citizens would always have divided loyalties.
On much the same ground, John Jay, then Superintendent of Foreign Affairs, wrote to Washington, as Mr. Canady said, as president of the Convention, urging that the Constitution ''declare expressly that the command in chief of the American Army shall not be given to nor devolved on any but a natural-born citizen.''
Meanwhile, as Mr. Canady also pointed out, a rumor was circulating that the Convention intended to invite a distant relative of George III to assume the American crown, a rumor that delegates publicly denied, despite the mantle of secrecy cloaking all those deliberations. Such nervous talk emphasized that the Convention must come up with something that in no way resembled or could be converted into a monarchy.
Debates about electing the President raged until early September, less than 2 weeks before the Convention adjourned. Then Pierce Butler, an Irish-born delegate, came up with a cumbersome plan that overcame the objections to all earlier proposals. This was the electoral college system. The system was so diffuse that it would be virtually impossible, given the primitive communications then available, for foreign agents to corrupt it. But for good measure Butler's proposal included the restrictive language, ''no person except a natural-born citizen.''
That language was adopted without a single dissenting voice, nor did anyone speak in its support. Its meaning and rationale went without saying. As Joseph Storey later explained in his famous commentaries, the phraseology ''cuts off all chances for ambitious foreigners who might otherwise be intriguing for the office and interposes a barrier against . . . corrupt interferences of foreign governments.''
Now, the question before the subcommittee is not the original purpose of the clause, but whether it has outlived its usefulness. The circumstances that prevailed at the time of the founding have changed. Yet it seems to me on balance that conditions in the foreseeable future warrant a continuation of the caution shown by the framers.
Take the matter of the possible corruption in the electoral process. The system is still structurally diffuse, but in practice it might as well be centralized, given modern techniques of communication and the instant portability of money, the most potent corrupting influence. Presidential candidates spend scores of millions of dollars. Just consider the prospective influence of a few billion dollars, a sum well within the means of a number of countries, any one of which, while unwilling to risk such a sum on a natural-born American, might be eager to support a candidate who had been born and raised in their country.
The original Constitution contemplated a relatively weak Presidency, but the office has become the most powerful in the world, and safeguards surrounding it are therefore more indispensable than ever. The one area of Presidential authority that is virtually unchecked and uncheckable is the President's power as Commander in Chief. Can that power be safely entrusted to a foreign-born citizen?