I have just learned about “amendforarnold.” It is an organization that is quite seriously pushing to amend the U.S. Constitution to allow naturalized citizens to become President, with the specific intention of making Arnold Schwarzenegger President. They have just run their first television commercial.
Personally, I think there might be a reasonable argument to be made that someone who has been a taxpaying U.S. citizen for a long time (maybe 20 years? 25 years?) should be able to run for and be elected President. But the idea of amending the Constitution to benefit one person is horrifying. Does anyone think this is a good idea? How about passing the amendment with the provision that it would not take effect for 20 years after ratification, meaning that it probably wouldn’t be used by any contemporary political figure.
ZERO chance of this amendment passing. It takes 2/3 of the House and Senate to propose a Constitutional amendment. Both bodies are more than 1/3 Democrat, and would vote against it.
I agree with this. Whether or not the amendment is a good idea in principle, the discussion now is unavoidably colored by current political and partisan considerations. The right time to put forward this amendment is when there are no major public figures it would apply to, if there is even any interest still. Failing that, a 20-year delay in the amendment taking effect would be a good alternative.
Lets not forget that the Democrats have their own ineligible governor in Canadian-born Jennifer Granholm of Michigan. She is a rising star in the Democratic Party and a deal might yet be worked out. I’m not as optimistic that this will happen as I once was but give the pot some time to boil.
As for the morality of it, of course the silly restriction should be removed. The people should decide for themselves who will best represent them. Even if the representative is foreign, young, or experienced. It is hubris to limit their choice in this manner.
Does not the restriction to two Presidential terms also limit the people’s choice? (Although changing that has less chance than even the Arnie amendment!)
I’d be for the amendment if it had an anti-grandfather clause. It only applies to those who are not yet American citizens.
I pray to God that this populace would not elect Arnold for president as it stands now, because he only got elected based on being the Terminator, and has thus far made a mess of the California budget.
However, I recently learned that I live in a very different country than I thought, and that job results don’t matter.
Heck, just change the requirement so that anyone who has been a citizen for 35 years can be President. For the native-born, it won’t make any difference and Arnie would become eligible in 2018, by which time he’ll either be a proven successful governor or a political joke.
I would want this type of amendment VERY carefully worded so that people couldn’t pull the kind of crap that senators pull, such as living in one state and running in another*.
*I don’t know if senators really do this or how it works but there’s almost always at least one candidate that gets accused of it every election year. Er, come to think of it, didn’t HRC and the guy that ran again Barack Obama both do it?
Certainly. Hence my comment that we should allow people to elect representatives even if they are experienced. Of course, residency restrictions do the same thing. When Thomas Paine went to France during her Revolution her provinces competed for the honor of having him speak for them in the new Assembly. What does it matter that he wasn’t a Frenchman? Or that he couldn’t even speak French? He had inspired people and they wanted him as their representative. Who are the designers of a popular political system to tell their bosses, the people, what kind of person will best represent them? As I said… hubris.
I am a diehard, bleeding heart liberal democrat, and I wholeheartedly support this amendment. I see no objective reason to oppose it other than partisan rancor over the possibility that Arnold could become President, but in the long run it’d be for the greater good.
Actually, I see very good reasons for keeping this restriction. The original intent of it was to prevent foreign citizens from attaining the presidency and then having split loyalties with the home country.
I still think that is a good reason. Let’s say the U.S. engaged in a trade war with Austria. Where would Arnold’s loyalties lie? Might he not favor that country more than he should become it’s his homeland?
Jennifer Granholm is anther good example. She’s a Canadian. There are tons of disputes between Canada and the U.S. Softwood lumber, immigration laws, water, pollution, you name it. If you elect a Canadian, how could you be sure that she isn’t giving Canada a break?
Easy fix: Require that the American president be born a U.S. citizen. It’s not like there’s a big shortage of people who couldn’t run the presidency. There’s no need to amend the constitution.
Plus, as my wife mentioned, the amendment process was supposed to be used for very weighty things - places where society has honestly outgrown the limitations of the document. The ERA is an example of the type of issue that should be settled by amendment. Whether Arnie should be allowed to be president does not. Nor does the anti-gay rights amendment which the Republicans are pushing.
What both sides are doing is using the constitution to ‘lock in’ their personal policy preferences when they have political advantage to do so. That’s not what it’s for. All this constant constitutional wrangling should just go away.
Much as I like Arnie, I’m afraid I can’t support this one.
But she isn’t Canadian. She’s American. Her family moved here from Canada when she was four years old. I know fourth-generation Irish who feel more ties toward their ancestral homeland than Granholm probably feels toward Canada. Should they be ineligible to run for president because their foreign policy might favor Ireland? Let the voters decide where a candidate’s loyalties lie, I say.
I’d be against this amendment, and not just because of Arnold. If someone hasn’t grown up going to American schools, driving on American roads, having to deal with the American healthcare system, and learning about America first hand, then how do they have the life experience needed to run America? You can learn a lot about the nation, but that doesn’t make up for the experience of growing up here. I don’t necessarily think Sam Stone’s scenario of favoritism would come true (after all, if someone really favored their birth nation they wouldn’t have moved here, right?), but I do think that being an effective leader involves knowing a lot about the people you’re representing, and that often means having spent your formative years in the place you’re representing. For instance, I could immerse myself in Japanese history, language, classical and popular culture; I could live in Japan for the rest of my life; I could even become a citizen. But would I know as much about the country as those people who were born and spent their entire lives (including the all-important childhood and adolescence) there? I don’t think so. I’m not saying foreign-born people aren’t “real Americans,” just that it’s important to have first hand experience.
I’d maybe be for this amendment if it was restricted to people who moved to the US when they were very young, allowing for enough time to be socialized as American. However, that would lead to all kinds of discussion about what age the amendment would be set at, and there aren’t very many people it would apply to anyway (Jennifer Granholm being an exception). Best to keep it the way it is, IMO.
I agree with you on gay rights, flag burning, and so on. However, whether the president needs to be a naturalized citizen is exactly the sort of issue amendments exist for. It’s a change to how our government is determined. It overrides a specific passage in the main body.
As to your other main point, I don’t think a person who has been a citizen for (twenty years, thirty-five years) has any more allegiance to their country of birth than a second-generation immigrant (like Martin van Buren, who grew up speaking Dutch at home).
But it absolutely must be; the constitution says he’s ineligible and legislation can’t override that.
Having said that, I think Sam has a case. While I don’t think Arnie would give Austria sweetheart deals, the suspicion would always be there, and I think one can argue that the President’s loyalty must be beyond question.
(Cue rjung with a lame Halliburton joke)
I agree. Questions of divided loyalties (or insufficent American experience) could, and would, be an issue for voters to decide at the polls. I gurantee you that any canny politician running against an immigrant would use the “I’m an American and share your values, Arnold isn’t” card as much as he could get away with (although there’s dangers in that too, no one likes a bigot, and voting immigrants, I’m thinking Latinos in particular, would be turned off).
There should be limits on the voter’s choices. Term limits prevent a popular tryant from solidifying a permanent power base. The prohibition against foreign born prevents foreign agents from taking power, but I think a lengthy waiting period after naturalization, and the electoral process itself, would have much the same effect.
I should add that I’m not too keen on Arnold (maybe if he said anything that wasn’t a catchphrase from his movies or SNL), but would happily vote for this amendment.
I’m a conservative Republican who wouldn’t vote for Arnold for President. I also dislike the notion of amending the Constitution for the benefit of one person.
That said, I don’t see why the ban on foreign-born citizens running for President is necessary. I don’t particularly like either Jennifer Granhom or Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I have absolutely no reason to question either person’s patriotism or loyalty to the United States. If either wanted to run for President, I’d be happy to let them do so, and to let the people decide.
As for Sam Stone’s objections that a foreign-born citizen might be inclined to put the old country’s needs first, well… we’ve had at least two foreign-born citizens serving as Secretary of State (Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright), a job which put them pretty much in charge of American foreign policy. If we can trust foreign-born citizens with THAT job, why not the Presidency?
As others have pointed out, Sam, is there any reason that the voters can’t take this concern into account when casting their ballots? Is there any reason to believe that a foriegn-born candidate’s opponent wouldn’t make the “divided loyalty” argument to the electorate if he thought that would be a winning strategy?
Indeed, we have precedent on this type of thing. In 1960, one of the big concerns in elevating Kennedy to the presidency was the possibility of divided loyalties to the Vatican, since Kennedy was a Roman Catholic. Kennedy had to assuage those concerns before he could be elected.
Plus, as others have noted, there have been many foriegn-born persons holding positions of power in the US forieng policy establishment, and they were put into place by means far less representative than Electoral College.
Your wife has it exactly backwards.
The ERA is best handled by ordinary legislation, as is most other guarantees of civil equality (see, e.g., the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Americans With Disabilities Act, etc.). There is no need to amend the constitution to attain the goals of the ERA (and indeed, I cannot see what the ERA adds that the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause does not already provide, constitution-wise).
The constitution is first and foremost a document establishing the structure of the US government. It is entirely appropriate (and indeed, necessary) to amend the constitution to change that structure. And it’s been done in the past: consider that originally that senators were appointed by the state legislatures, and it took the 17th amendment to change that by making them elected directly by the citizens of each state.
I agree that the constitution shouldn’t be tinkered with unnecessarily. Legislation is the better course when it provides an adequate remedy. But such a remedy is unavailable here.
I also note that there is nothing wrong with making a well-thought out change just because a particular individual proved a catalyst to that change. FDR, after all, was the catalyst for the 22nd amendment. I think we’re better off for requiring a changing of the guard every so often.
