Evidence from the period right after the Constitutional Convention also supports the notion that the Founding Fathers were very concerned about foreign influence on the federal government, and in particular on the President.
The most direct evidence comes from a statement made by Charles Pinckney to the U.S. Senate in 1800. Pinckney had been a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and, on July 26, 1787, had been the first delegate to raise the issue of presidential qualifications in the debate. On March 25, 1800, the Senate was debating a bill "prescribing the mode of deciding disputed elections of President and Vice President of the United States."(54) Pinckney gave a detailed explanation for the Electoral College, emphasizing that the rules governing the Electoral College were designed so "as to make it impossible ... for improper domestic, or, what is of much more consequence, foreign influence and gold to interfere."(55)
John Yinger is Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, and the father of two adoptive children, one of whom, even when old enough, will not be eligible to be President.
Well, that is hardly a smoking gun, and if that is the “most direct evidence” then you guys may have a little problemo, should this matter ever get to SCOTUS.
Foreign influence could be money, family, campaign donations from over seas individuals, or overseas corporations, or a love of English literature, or going to college overseas, or having a foreign wife, or even sleeping with a foreign mistress.
But nowhere I saw does Pinckney say anything about not having a foreign paw, and wasn’t Chester Arthur permitted to serve as president???
parsy, who thinks you need to go back to the drawing board