If the clause is so clearly meaningless as you demonstrate, (fence jumper children qualify) why bother exempting themselves.
“If the clause is so clearly meaningless as you demonstrate, (fence jumper children qualify) why bother exempting themselves.”
I seriously cannot understand why people persist in bringing up the grandfather clause as some sort of indication that one must be born of two citizen parents to be president. Their reasons for exempting themselves has nothing to do with how one is born a citizen, nor with split loyalties, nor with anything else of continued relevance today.
They grandfathered themselves in because no one, not a soul, had been born an American citizen. Not because no one had had an two American parents. No one had had any American parents. Nor had anyone been born on American soi. Because there was no America before there was.
We already know, everyone knows, that the Founders wanted presidents to have been born U.S. citizens. All the grandfather clause tells us is that an exception was made because no one had been born a citizen. That’s it.
Let me try that again: “Not because no one had had two American parents. No one had had any American parents. Nor had anyone been born on American soil.”
For clarification’s sake, I’ve maintained that it’s perfectly possible the Framers intended only the children of two citizens to serve as president. I’ve gone on to argue that they did so by saying only born citizens could serve, and that the 14th amendment defined born citizen status in such a way that could not have been anticipated.
But none of this has anything to do with the relevance of the grandfather clause. That clause in itself does not tell us whether natural born citizens were the children of two citizen parents or children born on U.S. soil. Because neither citizen parents nor American soil were extant at the time of the Founders’ births.
“If the clause is so clearly meaningless as you demonstrate, (fence jumper children qualify)”
Fence jumpers qualifying would not make the clause meaningless. It’s effect would no longer be what you and perhaps the framers would like it to be, but it would still have a meaning. And that meaning is “born citizen”.