Like the title says make Thomas Paine the President of the United States.
The law at the time said that anyone who lived in the colonies when the US declared independence was eligible to be President. Paine arrived in the colonies in 1774 and hence was eligible.Just get rid of the clause that says that only people born to U.S. citizens can be president. It's the one way to be sure.....
^This. I wish people would remember the (profoundly useless as it turned out) "Alexander Hamilton" clause when they comment on this. (And the law is 'natural-born citizens', which does not mean simply 'people born in the United States', but that's another issue...)
Now turning to the man--Paine suffers from a lot of the same problems that--well, Hamilton does--he's a political extremist with an alienating personality. Further, as opposed to Hamilton, he doesn't really want political power to begin with.
That's a valid point that SpanishSpy and yourself have brought up here, but my idea was, there may be some in Congress who might want to exclude *anyone* not born in the 13 colonies, so I thought expanding on the "Grandfather Clause" and modifying it so anyone can become President if a U.S. citizen and not just those who were grandfathered in as in our world. I hope I'm making sense here.![]()
(And the law is 'natural-born citizens', which does not mean simply 'people born in the United States', but that's another issue...)