Left out in '08 (Times rallying for Schwarzenegger to run for president)

Los Angeles Times ^ | January 14, 2007 | EDITORIAL

[calcowgirl]

THE GOVERNOR OF the nation's largest state was reelected in a landslide in November, even though his Republican Party is a minority in California. He works with Democrats in a way that offers the rest of the country a model of much-needed bipartisanship. To kick off his second term, he has proposed the most ambitious healthcare and environmental reforms in the country, and he is also committed to a massive reconstruction of the state's infrastructure.

Yet, oddly enough, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is not on the list of potential presidential candidates in 2008.

Why? Because the founders were worried in the 18th century that our fledgling nation might go the way of Poland and be overtaken by a foreign monarchy. Hence the constitutional qualifier that only "natural-born citizens" are eligible for the presidency of the United States.

In their wisdom, however, the Constitution's authors adopted a mechanism for the nation's founding document to be amended. Amendments should be undertaken sparingly, we agree, but it's a good thing that slavery was done away with and that suffrage has been expanded.

And now that we can all rest assured that no foreign monarch is going to move into the White House, it's long past due for this nation of immigrants to amend the Constitution to allow naturalized Americans to aspire to the presidency. This is precisely the type of defining issue — what it means to be American — that the amendment process was designed to address.

Supporting Schwarzenegger for governor (we did) does not necessarily lead to supporting him for president (we don't — yet). But why should Californians have their governor sidelined from the race? And why can't voters across the country be entrusted to decide for themselves whether the governor is sufficiently "American" to earn their vote? It's insulting, really.

[FrankR]

Let the camel's nose into the tent, and before you know it, the rest of him is there too.

What America doesn't need is non-American born Presidents...

[Erasmus]

That's why I crossed out the word "not" in your sentence.

[Erasmus]

I've looked into this further.

I conclude that my old history book was wrong about the "natural born" clause being intended to exclude Hamilton. I have found references to this theory, but a simple reading of the clause itself seems to invalidate it.

On the other hand, I don't see any references to the wording of the clause specifically to include Hamilton.

The "fourteen years" clause does not seem to have been written with Hamilton in mind, although it is an interesting point that he had been a resident for only about 16 years when the clause was adopted.

The "Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution" would certainly "grandfather" him in. But the clause was broad enough to include many other potential candidates as well.

There could be contemporary correspondence that would link either or both of these clauses to Hamilton that I haven't discovered, though.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Gee, wasn't this the same LA Slimes that was saying that Arnold was the second coming of Hitler during the recall election???