Wait, I Thought Obama Was the Foreigner?

You know when people talk about how someone isn't "qualified" to be present they're almost always talking out their asses. There are only a few actual qualifications the Constitution sets out for the President. One those few is the requirement that the President be a "natural-born citizen." Guess who might not meet that requirement? John McCain.

The problem stems from McCain's birth in the Panama Canal Zone:

In the most detailed examination yet of Senator John McCain’s eligibility to be president, a law professor at the University of Arizona has concluded that neither Mr. McCain’s birth in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone nor the fact that his parents were American citizens is enough to satisfy the constitutional requirement that the president must be a 'natural-born citizen.'

The analysis, by Prof. Gabriel J. Chin, focused on a 1937 law that has been largely overlooked in the debate over Mr. McCain’s eligibility to be president. The law conferred citizenship on children of American parents born in the Canal Zone after 1904, and it made John McCain a citizen just before his first birthday. But the law came too late, Professor Chin argued, to make Mr. McCain a natural-born citizen.

'It’s preposterous that a technicality like this can make a difference in an advanced democracy,' Professor Chin said. 'But this is the constitutional text that we have.'

Now, the Senate has resolved that McCain meets the requirement of natural-born citizenship (with both Obama and Clinton voting in support, IIRC) and it doesn't appear all that likely to
be an issue down the line (although there is apparently some sort of lawsuit pending in New Hampshire). Still, don't you love the irony of the "America first" party nominating a foreigner?