Cruz Unsettled

Texas Senator Ted Cruz's presidential bid has been gaining momentum in the all-important Iowa Caucus scheduled to take place February 1.   But now Donald Trump has focused his attention on Cruz's Canadian birth in an effort to undercut the senator's campaign.  "Ted Cruz has a problem," Trump told a rally Monday in Windham, New Hampshire.  "I mean, he's got a problem."

Trump, in an effort to win in Iowa, is now hammering away at whether Cruz qualifies to be U.S. President under the Constitution.  Article II of the Constitution specifies,  "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."  Central to the question of Cruz's eligibility is the definition of a "natural born citizen." 

Up to now Cruz has dismissed the issue as "settled law."  The senator admits he was born in Canada to his father, Rafael Cruz, who was a Canadian citizen at the time of his son's birth in 1970, and to his mother, who was born in Delaware.  Cruz, a lawyer, says he qualifies because his mother was an American and that he is therefore a natural born citizen.  

But Harvard's Laurence Tribe, a leading Constitutional scholar, says the matter is not settled.  "There’s a huge irony about the way Cruz interprets the Constitution," Tribe said in an email to the Huffington Post. "When it wouldn’t hurt him or things he cares deeply about, he insists on interpreting it the way he believes the Founding Generation intended it -- as what people call an 'originalist.' But to a true originalist, as the best scholarship on this topic has shown, a 'natural born citizen' would exclude someone like Ted Cruz because of his Canadian birth."

In an opinion piece in Monday's Boston Globe Tribe wrote,  "When Cruz was my constitutional law student at Harvard, he aced the course after making a big point of opposing my views in class — arguing stridently for sticking with the 'original meaning' against the idea of a more elastic 'living Constitution' whenever such ideas came up."  Tribe pointed out, "In truth, the constitutional definition of a “natural born citizen” is completely unsettled, as the most careful scholarship on the question has concluded.   Needless to say, Cruz would never take Donald Trump’s advice to ask a court whether the Cruz definition is correct, because that would in effect confess doubt where Cruz claims there is certainty."

Cruz's strongest supporter in Iowa, conservative Congressman Steve King, has been a leading voice in the birther movement that claims President Barack Obama is not a citizen, even though the president's mother was an American.  In 2012, Cruz's father was quoted as saying on a video, “We need to send Barack Obama back to Chicago. I’d like to send him back to Kenya, back to Indonesia.”  

Senator John McCain was born in Panama.  To avoid any questions about his citizenship when he ran for president in 2008, the senate passed "A resolution recognizing that John Sydney McCain, III, is a natural born citizen."  Members of the Senate were clearly was concerned questions could arise about McCain's qualifications even though he was born on a U.S. military base to an American father and mother.  And, given how  his colleagues view Cruz, it is not likely the Senate will do the same favor for him.  In fact, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the man Cruz called a liar on the floor of the Senate, has said he does not want to talk about the issue. 

Trump told the New Hampshire rally, "Whether you like it or not, Ted has to figure it out. Because we can't be having a nominee — if he got the nod, I think I'm going to win very solidly, if you want to know the truth — but, if you get the nomination, you can't have the person who gets the nomination be sued."  Sure enough, Florida Representative Alan Grayson told the Huffington Post last week he would sue if officials certified Cruz's eligibility.  "All that Cruz has done is wave his hands in the air and claimed that it's settled law when it's not," Grayson said.  

Despite his best efforts to brush this issue off, all of this has to be unsettling for Ted Cruz.  Perhaps he can reach out to President Obama for some advice.  Or perhaps he can simply jump the shark.

The Tide of War

In his speech to the nation Wednesday night, President Barack Obama announced his plans to withdraw 33,000 American troops from Afghanistan by the summer of 2012, just a few months before November's presidential election. This will bring an end to Obama's surge strategy but it is unlikely to mollify a growing war weariness among the American electorate.

In addressing a growingly skeptical American public the president sounded both optimistic and realistic. At one point he said, "the light of a secure peace can be seen in the distance." But he tempered his hope by saying, "huge challenges remain. This is the beginning -- but not the end -- of our effort to wind down this war." The president's decision would leave 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan to continue the already decade long war at least until 2014, assuming Afghanistan's forces will be able to take over.

The war in Afghanistan is costing U.S. taxpayers $2 billion a week, and more than 1,500 American soldiers have died there since 2001. Al Qaeda terrorists have been driven out of the country, and hostile Tailiban forces number perhaps 20,000 fighters. The Taliban have been degraded in some areas, but not defeated.

So President Obama is facing criticism from hawks, such as Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, who says that the withdrawal is too swift and an "unnecessary risk." South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham wrote a statement via twitter, "We've undercut a strategy that was working." And House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican from Michigan, expressed his concern; "We are in a very precarious place in Afghanistan right now. It seems the President is trying to find a political solution with a military component to it, when it needs to be the other way around."

The president is rolling the dice with this decision. The Americans have made progress in Afghanistan since Obama's surge, but the central government is frail and corrupt, and its president, Hamid Karsai, is unpopular and unpredictable. Afghanistan's military now numbers about 300,000, but it is unclear whether they can be molded into an effective and truly reliable fighting force. And due to the country's tribal nature creating a strong central government is highly unlikely. All of this uncertainty makes it difficult to see any light in the distance.

America is currently engaged in two and one-half wars that have already cost more than $1 trillion. Its military commitment in Iraq is slowly winding down but U.S. troops will still there for the near term. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is dead but the terrorist group has scattered to Yemen and other countries. And U.S. air forces are currently involved in a NATO effort to oust Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi but he remains in power. The president says "The tide of war is receding," but it is still a flood.

At one point in his speech the president sounded like candidate Obama. "Now, we must invest in America's greatest resource -- our people," he said, "while living within our means...it is time to focus on nation building here at home." But this will be hard to do while maintaining the huge costs of war and dealing with America's enormous deficits.

So it appears that the president, as he so often does, is steering a middle course in dealing with the extremely complex problem of Afghanistan. But in a year's time will the American public, already struggling with an anemic economic recovery, high unemployment and a weak housing market, be satisfied with the president's course? Or will a weary electorate choose another course?