Ted Cruz, Not a Canadian

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com
25 August 2013

Ted Cruz, Not a Canadian

George Washington, who knew he was not our first president, was born a British subject because his parents were British subjects and he was born to those British subjects – mostly to his mother, biology being like that - on British soil.  Okay, not literally on British soil, but in a bed that was on a floor that was in a house that stood on British soil.  You get the idea.

But was George Washington the 9^th president, or the 17th?  If we number the presidents from our first governing document, the Articles of Confederation, George is the 9^th.  If we consider presidents from 1776, George is the 17^th.  Some folks add the two convention presidents prior to the Declaration of Independence, which would make G.W. the 19^th.

Under Article II of the 1787 Constitution, George Washington was eligible to be president because he was an American (Canadians and Mexicans are Americans too, but since it’s hard to say “united States-ian,” we have arrogated “American” to ourselves) citizen when that Constitution was adopted, eleven years after the nation established itself.  Thus, American citizens born before the Revolution, who could not be Americans by birth because the USA did not exist, were given an exemption from the “natural born Citizen” rule, which did not extend past that generation.  This would violate the concept of equal protection under the law except that this idea was not part of the Constitution until 1868.

And what does “natural born” mean, anyway?  Can anyone be unnaturally born?

So can Ted Cruz, born in Canada, be elected to the Presidency of the United States?

Of course he can.  His mother was an American citizen who happened to be in Canada at the time but who never repudiated her American citizenship. 

If being born somewhere else disqualified someone from elected office, many thousands of Americans born to our military, our diplomatic corps (not sure why we call ‘em a corps), and the occasional tourist with a poor sense of timing would not be really-real Americans. 

The constitutional question was raised speciously several election cycles ago when Senator John McCain stood for the presidency.  He was born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936, where his Navy father was posted.  The argument that he was born on U.S. colonial territory is unnecessary; he was born to American citizens. 

Senator Cruz is not required to wear a bell and cry “Unclean!  Unclean!” simply because he was born two feet north of the 49^th parallel instead of two feet south of it.

The argument against Senator McCain’s eligibility ceased when the details of the birth of the opposing party’s candidate were revealed to be somewhat more opaque than transparent.  But one thing is transparent – President Obama’s mother never foreswore her allegiance, and so, no matter where he was born, Barack Obama was born an American.

When Senator Cruz was recently advised that under Canadian law he could claim to be a Canadian citizen and a subject of the British Crown, he appears to have been upset.

Well, yeah, what right-thinking Christian man would want to be accused of being a Canadian, eh?  You know what Those People are like – they hang out at Tim Horton’s eating seal-flipper burgers and watching hockey on the telly and saying “eh” all the time. 

Before you could say “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon crowed three times” Senator Cruz responded with “Nothing against Canada, but…”

Oops.

“Nothing against…but…” is a parallel to “with all due respect.”  When someone says to you “With all due respect,” you know very well that respect ain’t happening. 

That Canada would accept her prodigal son back home with metaphorically open arms has no writ in our by-golly-republic, and as an American he needn’t repudiate something that doesn’t exist here.  In sum, Senator Cruz, who is testing the murky waters with regard to the presidency, was quite pointlessly rude to the USA’s best friend. 

Senator Cruz has forgotten an important American rule: you do not alienate your country’s friends until you are elected president.

-30-