Let’s forget for a moment, how well or poorly he performed as a governor and just use him as a convenient prop.
In other words, is there a chance of repealing the part in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution that says the president must be a “natural-born” citizen, meaning from at least one american parent at the time of birth, or on U.S soil.
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Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution sets the requirements to hold office. A president must:
[ul]
[li]be a natural-born citizen of the United States;[note 1][/li][/ul]
[ul]
[li]be at least thirty-five years old;[/li][/ul]
[ul]
[li]have been a permanent resident in the United States for at least fourteen years.[/li][/ul]
**
So technically, Al Awlaki or Maj. Nidal would’ve been qualified to run for president, whereas Arnold Schwarzenegger would not. Can’t the voters be trusted, in the age of 24h cable media and internet, to make up their own minds about his eligibility for office, using birthplace as just one more criterium next to race or religion?
In the last primaries, registered republican voters wisely didn’t elect Bachmann, Herman Caine, Gingrich, Perry or Santorum.
What do you think are the odds of getting the necessary votes in congress to amend the constitution?
Not a chance. It makes sense to get rid of the requirement, but I just don’t see it making to the top of the priority list. Arnold’s got too many scandals to get elected president, but someone else might make it if we ever repeal that part of the constitution.
I would oppose repealing the clause. But even if it were repealed I’d bet there would be a clause in the repaeal that exempted anyone alive when the repeal went into effect, thus continuing to prohibit Ah-node from becoming POTUS. (Thank goodness!:rolleyes: )
Slim to none; see also snowball in hell. While I think most people (excepting pkbites, of course ;)) would agree that the requirement is antiquated and should be dropped, the fact is that it only comes up in context of some particular candidate that people want to have on the ballot. (Which is perfectly natural; Congress has got better shit to [del]not[/del] do than edit bits of the Constitution that aren’t immediately relevant.) And whenever one of those candidates comes up, he’s going to be from a political party, and everyone in the other political party will oppose him. So the only time you’re likely to see it happen is if a party has a 2/3s supermajority in both the House and Senate, controls 3/4s of the State legislatures, and has some incredibly charismatic Presidential hopeful who isn’t a natural born citizen. If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on the Powerball instead; I think the odds are better.
Close to zero. Even if there were a huge groundswell of support leading to a Constitutional amendment, it would undoubtedly be worded to put the change in the future, after at least the next full Presidential administration. So if it happened in the next year or two, it’s possible he could be eligible for 2020… at which point he would be 73, older than even Reagan at election.
I don’t see any alternative short of mass insanity that would make provision for him to run in 2016. So… vanishingly slim to nil to none.
End tank god for dat. I had a little more admiration for him as governor than some, after a dizzying sense of having been pranked when he was elected, but he’s just not the politician/leader some think he is.
Speaking as a conservative Republican who likes a lot of Arnold’s movies but wouldn’t vote for him for President (or any high office)… there is absolutely no chance that Arnold will ever be president, or even that the Constitution could be changed soon enough to allow him to mount a presidential campaign.
Now, it would be FINE by me if that piece of the Consttution were amended. We’ve had at least two foreign-born Secretaries of State controlling our foreign policy (Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright) and at least one foreign-born Secretary of the Treasury (Albert Gallatin), and I don’t see why we should trust them with THOSE jobs but not with the Presidency.
I wouldn’t vote for Madeleine Albright or Jennifer Granholm for President, but I’m not worried about either woman being disloyal to the USA. I’d be fine with either woman running for President, and I’d trust the voters to decide if there was any genuine reason to reject her.
Regardless, you’d need both houses of Congress and 3/4 of the states to approve a Constitutional amendment, and I just don’t see a huge groundswell of support for such an amendment. Certainly, no one would support the change if it were perceived as benefitting just one specific person, like Arnold.
Until there’s some absurdly popular foreign-born politician, I don’t see much support for an amendment.
Well, the obvious result of such an amendment would be to crush the hopes of every “birther” forever. Of course, they’d just say it wasn’t validly enacted because the flag in Congress had a fringe on it or something.
The only way that it could ever get passed if it were tacked on another relevant amendment. It could never be passed for any particular candidate.
Let’s say god, herself, wants to run and is enormously popular with the voters. If she’s going to run as a Republican, it would be in the Democratic party’s interest to not allow her to do so, and the coattail affect would ensure a complete sweep. Same reasoning if she were to run as a liberal.
No. In his book he mentions that he wanted to run for governor for a while, but he knew he would not survive a primary election in the GOP. The recall election was an opportunity for him to run w/o having to face the primary.
So no. He would never survive a GOP primary.
Now that I bothered to read the OP, where that wasn’t an issue I will add this. No, that amendment will not be changed. As nations decline they start to drive further and further into nationalism and rigid ideology. The US is already doing this, becoming a mix of despondent over how far we are falling (we are a poorly run plutocracy) and arrogant to hide from this fact. I don’t think we would change this amendment in that environment.
After China’s economy is bigger than ours, and has been for a few decades (and Latin America’s economy is the size of ours, etc etc) then maybe. But not in the next 20-30 years.
The last few decades when we realized that we aren’t special and that other nations are catching up to and surpassing us. Our national philosophy seems heavily based on exceptionalism, and we are becoming less exceptional all the time. I think this will lead to an increase in nationalism as people try to hide from it.
I wouldn’t say yesterday was better than today by any means. But just as Britain went through a decline in their global status, the US is doing the same thing.
Probably the same thing stopping him from bribing native-born potential POTUSes to do his secret bidding and then impose King George’s will on us once elected.
AIUI, the point of Section 1, Article 2 was to forestall the possibility of some rich foreign prince getting into power in America, maybe even imposing a monarchy. This was not long after Independence, Americans were still a little paranoid about European imperial ambitions. (The Monroe Doctrine reflects the same thinking.) Like, how Napoleon III, almost a hundred years after the Constitutional Convention, set up an Austrian Hapsburg prince, Maximilian, as his puppet Emperor of Mexico; so maybe it wasn’t such a crazy fear after all, then. But it is now. Is it really any threat to American sovereignty or democracy, if an Austrian prince like Ahnold becomes POTUS today?
