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To: AuH2ORepublican
"There were many, many stylistic changes made to the Constitution; not all changes were substantive."

Really? Even Alexander Hamilton, acknowledged the change of eligibility requirement for POTUS in Federalist #68, where he also acknowledges the national security reason for the requirement of natural born Citizen instead of his original draft of "born a Citizen":

"Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?"

1,050 posted on 04/27/2011 12:20:08 PM PDT by Godebert
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To: Godebert

That language that you quoted has nothing to do with the president’s constitutional qualifications. Had you bothered to quote the entire paragraph, rather than an excerpt, you would have noticed that Hamilton believed that the means by which the Constitution assures us that a person beholden to a foreign state will not be appointed to the presidency is due to the existence of an Electoral College composed of citizens of each state elected by the people thereof (and the members of the Electoral College cannot be officers of the U.S., who may be corrupted). It’s funny how the stylistic change of “born a citizen” to “natural-born citizen” was not deemed by Hamilton to merit even a mention in his Federalist #68 on the mode of electing the president.

Anyhow, here’s the entire paragraph written by Hamilton on how the Constitution’s Electoral College protects us from a foreign power imposing a president beholding to its interests:

Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union? But the convention have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention. They have not made the appointment of the President to depend on any preexisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes; but they have referred it in the first instance to an immediate act of the people of America, to be exerted in the choice of persons for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment. And they have excluded from eligibility to this trust, all those who from situation might be suspected of too great devotion to the President in office. No senator, representative, or other person holding a place of trust or profit under the United States, can be of the numbers of the electors. Thus without corrupting the body of the people, the immediate agents in the election will at least enter upon the task free from any sinister bias. Their transient existence, and their detached situation, already taken notice of, afford a satisfactory prospect of their continuing so, to the conclusion of it. The business of corruption, when it is to embrace so considerable a number of men, requires time as well as means. Nor would it be found easy suddenly to embark them, dispersed as they would be over thirteen States, in any combinations founded upon motives, which though they could not properly be denominated corrupt, might yet be of a nature to mislead them from their duty.


1,096 posted on 04/27/2011 12:59:40 PM PDT by AuH2ORepublican (If a politician won't protect innocent babies, what makes you think that he'll protect your rights?)
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