Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Fighting tiny injustices

Matthew Yglesias seems overly disturbed by the Constitution's exclusion of foreign born citizens from the presidency.
People constantly seem to be forgetting about this, but the foreign-born are systematically excluded from the presidency for no real reason. Like a kid who immigrated to this country from Mexico at the age of two is seriously at risk of disloyalty, or we're all haunted by a deep, dark suspicion that Madeleine Albright may be a sleeper agent run by Czech intelligence. Thus, the popular moderate Republican governor of the country's largest state isn't considered a potential contender in 2008 and won't be a contender in 2012, either, because he was born in Austria.
I've got to say, in the scope of injustices, this ranks about as high as getting the wrong colored gum ball from a vending machine. We've got over 300 million citizens in this country. About a dozen will ever be president. Are we really going to amend the Constitution so Arnold Schwarzenegger can get his 1 in 20 million chance? If you really want to tinker with the Constitution, how about lobbying for an end to the Electoral College instead?

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