Are You Serious?

I don't know how many people are aware of it or not, but during the 2008 Presidential election, there were groups of people on both sides of the political spectrum who tried to disprove that either John McCain and Barack Obama were not eligible to be President of the United States. For anyone not familiar with the American Constitution, Article Two lays out the role of the executive branch of the U.S. government, which includes the requirements to be President:

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

Basically, the Constitution says that in order to be President, you need to be 35-years-old, lived in the United States for fourteen years, and have been born on American soil, making you a natural born citizen.

I'm not an expert on elections of the past, but I believe this past election of 2008 was a first for Presidential politics; where neither candidate was born on the mainland of the United States. John McCain was born at the Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone, Panama, which was considered United States territory. This made him a natural born citizen. Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii.

However, there are people at both extremes of both parties who claimed and some who continue to claim that neither McCain or Obama are natural born citizens. The argument for McCain was that he was not born inside the United States. The argument for Obama is much slimmer; that he was born, I believe, in Kenya, meaning that he is a natural born citizen.

Even though Obama produced a Hawaiian birth certificate during last year's election, his critics claim that it is either a fake or has been altered. If you ask me, this is a little extreme. It got to the point where these critics took their argument all the way to the Supreme Court. The Court did not hear the challenge. Even after Obama has served six months as President, there are stil those who claim he is not legitimate!

It has gotten to the point where I recently discovered this news story!

Whether this is an attempt to question Obama's citizenship or not, if this law were to be passed (and I doubt it) you can bet that there will be people in 3 years who will argue that Barack Obama is not eligible to run for re-election. Yes, that's right. The President is not eligible to be President!

I find this bill unnecessary. In fact, I find it redundant since the Constitution of the United States already lays out the requirements for this bill. Shouldn't proof that one meets those requirements be implied already? Why go through the process of writing a bill and passing it into a law when the things it requires are already required in the Constitution?

To be honest, I believe Obama's citizenship is legit. And I believe that those in Congress who are trying to get this bill passed are only fanning the flames, with the unlikely (but not impossible) intention of challenging Obama's right to run for re-election in 2012! It's more evidence of the various methods that those on both political extremes will take to win.

I'm disgusted at how increasingly divided this country has become, especially over the last 8 years. When you have Republicans saying that they hope health care reform fails so that it will sink Obama, when you have people hoping that the President fails at his job just because he's not of your party, it's a sign that more and more politicians and biased political pundits are putting political victory ahead of the well-being of everybody.

I was not a fan of George W. Bush. I didn't think he was a very good President, and I'll never understand how he could be re-elected, let alone elected as President, but the matter of the fact is that for 8 years he was the President. Like it or not, he was. But I never wanted the man to fail, because I knew that if he failed, the nation and its citizens would suffer. I didn't agree with Bush on a lot of things, but I never wanted him to fail at doing his job to defend the citizens of this country.

I want Barack Obama to succeed. If he fails, the nation suffers, and during these tough economic times, can we afford his failure? His failure is our failure. In 2012, I will do more then just look at whether or not Barack Obama was able to keep his word. I will take a look at why he failed. If it was his own doing, I will certainly voted against him. However, if it was the fault of others, then Obama will earn my vote and I will vote against those who are responsible for his failure.

It's time for everyone, whether Democrat or Republican, to set aside differences and try to work together for the improvement of the country and its citizens. Nothing else should matter.

And to those who continue to ride the Obama-is-not-a-citizen bandwagon; wake up! He's the President!