Is the McCain campaign Constitutional?

As the race for the White House wages on, a little factoid often goes over looked. This is the fact that some may claim that the McCain candidacy is not Constitutional. The reason for this is that John McCain was not born in the Continental United States. McCain was actually born on a U.S. naval base in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936, where his father was stationed. Unlike others who are not eligible to run like California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, born in Austria, or Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, born in Canada, McCain was born in a U.S. territory at the time of his birth. His parents were both U.S. citizens so he was legally born as a natural born citizen in the United States. So many feel that as a result of that, he is eligible to run for president under Article II Section I of the U.S. Constitution. However, as we all know in politics, there are disbelievers, and so John McCain in 2000 as well as 2008 hired lawyers in order to put the eligibility issue aside during his busy campaign for the presidency. They have concluded that he is indeed a natural born citizen, and is indeed eligible to become president.

It is also interesting to note that if this race is an Obama-McCain match up, it would make the first time that both major party candidates were not born in the continental United States as Barack Obama was born and raised in the state of Hawaii.

This reminds me of some of our lectures in class of Alexander Hamilton. While he may have wanted to run for president, many question whether he was eligible as he was born in the West Indies, which was not part of the colonies at the time of the Revolution.

Sites I received info from:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.articleii.html#section1

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=H000101

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23841816/