Will Arnold ever be President of the United States of America?

For as long as I can remember, people have been talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming President some day. The scary part of that discussion is that many of those people were serious about that possibility. Keep in mind that this was during the days when Arnold was playing the Terminator rather than having his face imprinted with CGI. He had moved past his days playing Hercules running around NYC and his self promoting video biography of his days from the body building circuit, but he was still just a big man with a funny accent.

These days Arnold has built some significant clout that could put him in position to run for office some day. He's married to a Kennedy, he's been the governor of California, and even though things didn't always go the way he planned in California, he did manage to keep the state in one piece in some pretty rough times.

So what's to keep the strong man from running say in 2012? There is the little detail of him not being an American citizen. At some point in the process of developing our system of government, the founding fathers decided that while foreigners were more than welcome to move to America, they certainly could not run for President. That makes sense to a certain extent, and what that means is that poor Arnold isn't eligible to be a part of that electoral race.

Is there a loophole? This is America, land of the loopholes. All Arnold needs is a Constitutional Amendment. That can either come through the Legislature or each state would have to have a vote on the matter, and if every state said yes, then it could happen.  If you think about the process, you can quickly determine that this would be a lengthy process. If there were a major push, and the majority of the country was behind it, the Amendment might get passed in 10 years. (Remember, you have to have state-wide petitions, each state would have to consider the proposition and have a vote on it before anything else would even be possible.)

So what about Arnold? As far as we know, he has no Presidential aspirations, but even if he did, he wouldn't be in any condition to run the country by the time he actually could. At 67, Schwarzenegger would be in his late 70s by the time he might be eligible to run for office. McCain had a hard enough time with the age issue during the last election, so I don't think that Arnold would make out any better on that front.

My money is on this answer being no, Arnold Schwarzenegger will never be the President of the United States of America. That's just my opinion. Feel free to comment on this topic below.