American Political System: Difference between revisions
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* Natural born citizen (read: US citizen by birth, rather than by naturalization) OR citizen at the time the Constitution was adopted. The latter was necessary because at the time of the Constitution's adoption, the United States had only existed for 7 years, meaning that the election of 1812 was the first in which it was mathematically possible for a natural born citizen to meet the 35 years of age requirement, and going for more than 20 years without a President was obviously not an option.
Note the requirement is technically a little more flexible than "only native-born", but unless you were alive in September 1787 ''and'' living between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean, it's pretty much limited to the native born. Either way, John McCain (who was born in the Panama Canal Zone) qualifies. <ref>"Any person born in the Canal Zone on or after February 26, 1904, and whether before or after the effective date of this chapter, whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such person was or is a citizen of the United States, is declared to be a citizen of the United States."--8 USC § 1403</ref>One can be born anywhere on Earth (or space) and still be a "natural born citizen" of the US if at least one of your parents is an American citizen who has lived in the US for five years. A person born within the territorial boundaries of the United States is a natural-born citizen regardless of parentage, unless said person's parents are foreign diplomats or members of an invading force.<ref>At the time of the Fourteenth Amendment Native Americans were also excluded not just because of racism (there was plenty of that going round to be sure) but also because Indian tribes were assumed to be sovereign (since the citizenship act of 1924 Indians were assumed to have individual citizenship though tribes often retained what amounted to a collective feudal treaty).</ref> 2016 Republican Primary candidate Ted Cruz was born in Canada, but had US citizenship at birth because his mother was an American citizen and was generally considered, though was challenged on this, to be eligible.
The only two Presidents that have actually been challenged in any way under the terms of eligibility to date are Barack Obama and Chester A. Arthur. Challengers to Obama claim that he was actually born in Kenya, and that his Hawaiian birth certificate and newspaper birth announcements were forgeries, a claim which was earliest recorded from perennial (Republican at the time) candidate Andy Martin in 2004, got circulated by a couple of Clinton staffers during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary<ref>They were let go, but leaked DNC emails in 2016 included some discussion of the possibility of spreading rumors that Bernie Sanders was an atheist, so clearly there were still some in the organization who considered [[Abomination Accusation Attack]]s against primary opponents fair play.</ref>, but was much more enthusiastically taken up thereafter by the political right<ref>We say 'political right' rather than 'Republican Party' because, while lots of talk show hosts and pundits were quite up-front about accusing Obama of not being a natural-born citizen, no major member of the GOP actually stated a belief that he was not eligible to be President -- although some were certainly quite happy to talk about his eligibility as if it were an open question.</ref> (including, funnily enough, [[Donald Trump]], who succeeded Obama eight years later). He eventually got so annoyed with this that he released his long-form birth certificate, then [[Crowning Moment of Funny|splashed it on a mug with the slogan "Made in the USA"]] and [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|killed]] [[Osama Bin Laden]] about two days later, which effectively shut up all but the [[Vocal Minority|noisiest]] of the "birther theorists."
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