Romney wins Illinois

No big surprise. It looks like it's "in the bag" for Romney. But that's been true for awhile now, hasn't it?

The talk may turn now towards his VP selection. With the recent post about "natural born citizen", the possibility of a VP Marco Rubio becomes somewhat controversial and makes for some lively discussion.

On the subject of natural born citizen, I've gotten some comments. There's more to the subject than it appeared.

After all, what exactly are we doing when we select a nominee for President? It seems so obvious that it doesn't warrant discussion, but it does in this context of natural born citizen. The discussion implies exclusion, whereas mere citizenship would tend to inclusion. Not everybody can be President, but plenty of people can be citizens. You have to choose only one from very many. Along the way, you can't help but be unfair. For the office is exclusive by nature. There's no getting around that.

You can't have 300 million Presidents. You can have only one. Therefore, some way has to be devised to exclude just about everybody.

The process of exclusion is in the rulebook called the Constitution. Only natural born citizens can be President. But who is a natural born citizen, and why only natural born citizens? Ah, the bone of contention.

Should the pool of candidates be larger or smaller? It could be argued that it should be as small as possible in order for it to be manageable. A large pool of candidates only invites confusion where confusion cannot be tolerated. There cannot be an "undecided" who gets sworn in on January 20th, 2013. There's no such person, of course. The pool of candidates must be manageable or the decision cannot be made in time.

On the subject of natural born citizen, it may well be worth re-reading the Federalist Papers. What did the framers have in mind when they included this language in the Constitution? But I haven't the time to study this in depth.

So I'll go on my instincts for now. I'd say the point is to insure that there were no doubts as to the loyalty to the country. There should not be one ounce of doubt on that subject. Not one. Not even the possibility of one. That should exclude Obama. But of course, that didn't happen. The reason why is one that should make for interesting discussion.