Presidential candidates, prove U.S. citizenship

The June 29 Gazette article about former Republican Congressman Jim Leach, now the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, had an interesting quote : “When someone suggests the person holding our highest office was not born here, it delegitimizes the office.”

The most powerful person in the United States, and in the world, is the president. Our forefathers, who wrote the Constitution, inserted in Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution that the president must be a natural-born citizen of the United States. They also required that the person be at least 35 years old and be a U.S. resident for at least 14 years. This was because if the person was born in another country, or lived in another country, he/she might feel more allegiance to the other country.

I therefore believe that anyone running for U.S. president should prove that he or she is a natural-born citizen and not withhold a birth certificate, passports for extended (many year) foreign country visits, foreign and U.S. school records or any other evidence of birth or citizenship in another country.

If the National Endowment for the Humanities is funded by U.S. taxpayers, I would suggest to Congress that this is a good place to cut fat out of the Obama 2012 budget.

Robert Cribbs

Mount Vernon