WaPo Dusts Off McCain Citizenship Non-story

Stop me if you've heard this before: McCain, theoretically, might be ineligible for the presidency due to his being born on a naval installation in what was then the Panama Canal Zone.

Oh, that's right, we have heard this. Back in February, as a matter of fact.

No matter to the Washington Post's Michael Dobbs, who recycled the story a full 64 days later in the May 2 paper.

Dobbs breathed new life into the story by citing the April 30 action by the U.S. Senate in passing a nonbinding resolution declaring McCain eligible, in its opinion, for the presidency.

But to Dobbs, well, that's just one opinion, and one which "has little bearing on an arcane constitutional debate." Of course, something tells me federal courts are not going to so casually disregard the opinion of the United States Senate on what essentially is a "political question."

And so Dobbs launched into 22 paragraphs of coverage about how, though the chances are slim, McCain could, just could be disqualified. Of course, Dobbs also saw fit to bury in paragraph 21 the fact that it would be very difficult for any litigant to gain standing in federal court to even try this case (emphasis mine):

[Catholic University law professor Sarah] Duggin believes that [Fred] Hollander and the other plaintiffs are likely to have a hard time establishing their own eligibility, or legal standing, to challenge McCain. She said it will be difficult for them to demonstrate that they have been "disenfranchised" because of the mere presence on the ballot of a candidate with debatable constitutional qualifications.

That was followed by the closing paragraph in which Duggin gave a nightmare scenario that is equally unlikely to happen:

But she said the matter should be sorted out before the election, rather than afterward: "Imagine what would happen if the courts were to overturn an election simply based on eligibility. It would be a disaster. After what happened in 2000, people would completely lose faith in the electoral process."

*As TimesWatch.org editor Clay Waters noted in his February 28 NewsBusters post, the Washington Post dealt with the McCain natural-born citizenship issue back in 1998, when McCain was gearing up for his 2000 presidential election run.