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| Hyphenated In The U.S.A. | |||||||
| Some legislators are trying to repeal the law preventing foreign-born American citizens from becoming president. Conspiracy theorists think it’s all a Nazi plot | |||||||
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| Oct. 27 — Arnold Schwarzenegger’s father was a Nazi. The Governator himself once spoke admiringly of Hitler (and, more alarmingly, wienerschnitzel). And he regularly stars in movies as a machine sent from the future to destroy America. Yet some people think he should be allowed to be president. |
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WAIT A MINUTE, you might be thinking: He can’t run for president?! Why the hell not?! Jesse Ventura could run for president, and Arnold is a much bigger star than the former Minnesota governor. Sorry, “Predator” fans, but don’t blame Hollywood this time. Schwarzenegger’s bid for higher office is barred by the U.S. Constitution. Article II, Section I of that moldy document clearly states that “No person except a natural born citizen…shall be eligible to the office of President.” But that ultimate barrier to the highest office in the land could someday fall, thanks to a group of legislators who feel that it’s not fair to ask hyphenated Americans to die in our wars, to pay for them through taxes, to condemn people to die if they’re unlucky enough to get jury duty and to vote in our elections—yet not allow them to become president just because their mothers had the bad timing (or bad taste) to deliver them outside the borders of the United States. And talk about politics making strange bedfellows (down, Arnold). This group of lawmakers is so bipartisan—including conservative Senator Orrin Hatch (Very, Very R-Utah) and liberal Congressman Barney Frank (Very, Very D-Massachusetts)—that you have to think maybe it’s onto something. As Frank puts it: “I don’t think we should treat immigrants as lesser people than naturally-born citizens.” At least after a few decades. The Congressional bill would require that foreign-born citizens be citizens for 35 years before they could run for president (Arnold would be well into his 70s), while Hatch’s proposal wants to get Schwarzenegger into office as quickly as possible, requiring only 20 years of U.S. citizenship (which the ex-muscleman already has). Hatch cloaked his amendment in the same “do the right thing for immigrants” talk as Frank, but in interviews, it’s clear who the main target of the senator’s “Arnold Amendment” is. “If Arnold Schwarzenegger turns out to be the greatest governor of California, which I hope he will, if he turns out to be a tremendous leader and he proves to everybody in this country that he’s totally dedicated to this country as an American, we would be wrong not to give him that opportunity [to be president],” Hatch said. Earlier in the same Salt Lake City Tribune interview, he detailed Schwarzenegger’s qualifications: “He’s a nice man, very talented. He’s a very bright guy who is devoted to his wife…If he gets the chance, he’s not going to be a namby-pamby out there.” (The Dictionary of American Politics did not offer a definition of “namby-pamby,” so I’m assuming that Hatch is convinced Schwarzenegger won’t namby any more women’s pambies— at least in public.) Even the conservative commentator George Will is apparently on board, writing that the ban on immigrants has an “unpleasantly nativist tang” (which, to me, sounds more like a bad NASA beverage choice than a reason to amend the Constitution). It’s hard to argue with Hatch, Will and Frank’s spirit of inclusion—except that most Americans seem to be arguing with it. Recent polls suggest that two-thirds of the country is not ready for a foreign-born president. And broad anecdotal evidence, admittedly less scientific, indicates that we pretty much still hate immigrants. It might help to know what the Founding Fathers were thinking when they tacked that article and section onto an otherwise pretty good document, so I called Stephen Frank, the senior director of research at the National Constitution Center. I expected Frank to tell me that the Founding Fathers held contentious debates over this particular sentence, that Ben Franklin and Charles Pinckney had to be repeatedly separated, that Roger Sherman and James Madison pulled on each other’s mutton-chops for days on end, and that everyone made fun of Gouveneur Morris’s name. But, Frank said, it wasn’t like that. “There was no debate on that provision at all,” he said. “The Founding Fathers were well aware of how foreign powers were meddling in other countries’ political affairs and they wanted to avoid that. They knew that in Poland, Russia, Prussia and Austria put their man on the throne and then partitioned the country.” So it’s clear what the Framers wanted. Then again, who cares what the Founding Fathers wanted? They weren’t always right, you know (slavery, the Articles of Confederation, wigs). |
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I wanted to know what Arnold himself thought of all of this, but he hasn’t returned a reporter’s call since he needed help promoting “Last Action Hero.” But Larry King did ask Schwarzenegger if he’d run for president if the Constitution was changed. Arnold replied, “I don’t have those intentions, to be honest with you…[Changing the Constitution] is something to think about, but I haven’t really thought about it.” (That sounds like the old non-senile senile: If something is “something to think about,” how come he hasn’t “thought about it?”) Without Arnold, the “Arnold Amendment” becomes far less sexy—no offense to Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, arguably the second-most prominent foreign-born star in politics today (apologies to that Labor Secretary whose name I keep forgetting). As a Canadian by birth, Granholm can’t run for president, even though she came to this country when she was 4. I called Granholm for a comment and was read her official statement on the subject (with my translation in parentheses): “Except for native Americans, we are a country of immigrants (aren’t I a good Democrat?). That is the essence, the fundamental core, the heritage of being an American (no, really, wouldn’t you love to see a good Democrat like me be president?). You can’t choose where you are born, but you can choose where you live and where you swear your allegiance (I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United…). If the concern is loyalty to America, which it is, then a requirement that a naturalized citizen have lived in this country for 25 or more years should alleviate that concern, particularly where someone was brought to this country as a child (sort of like I was. Hmm, isn’t that interesting?). I emphasize that this is not about me (this is entirely about me). I have no interest, not a whit, in running for president.” (Did you like the way I used an 18th-century word like “whit”? Isn’t that what James Monroe used to say?) In the end, I took Granholm at her word. I Googled her and discovered that she’d given the same statement—word for word—to dozens of other papers, so she must really mean it. In fact, I found myself wishing she could be president. After all, Canada has given us so much: hockey, oil, William Shatner. Critics say that regardless of the amount of time a foreigner has lived here, the foreign-born president would still have an emotional connection to his homeland that could skew the decision-making process. And the War on Terror has some critics foaming at the mouth about how “patient” terror groups like Al Qaeda could send a young recruit to the United States, wait 35 years, get him elected to the highest office in the land and then have him slam Air Force One into the Empire State Building. It could happen, of course, except that Al Qaeda could never get someone elected president. Everyone knows that Al Qaeda holds boring fundraisers (you can’t even get a beer). Still, given Schwarzenegger’s well-documented friendship with former Austrian president (and former Nazi soldier) Kurt Waldheim, the conspiracy theorists are having a field day, saying that a Schwarzenegger presidency is the final goal of a Nazi plot that began with his recall election win in California. Like all conspiracy theories, this one is fueled by a startling fact: recently declassified government documents show President Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a director of a bank with ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler. Meanwhile, the same conspiracy theorists are buzzing over Internet reports that Karl Rove’s grandfather, Karl Heinz Roverer, was a Nazi party chairman. So, do the math: President Bush’s right hand man, Karl Rove, helped Schwarzenegger get elected in California. No wonder these conspiracy theorists are convinced that if we amend the Constitution to allow Schwarzenegger to become president, Karl Rove would end up running the country. Who needs an amendment; isn’t that happening already? Gersh Kuntzman is also Brooklyn bureau chief for The New York Post. His website is at www.gersh.tv |
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|  © 2003 Newsweek, Inc. | ||||||||||||||||||
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