Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of California.
I'm tempted to just write that 100 times, because it is funniest true sentence I have ever written.
The only thing funnier or scarier than the Kindergarten Cop holding a governorship is the thought of him being, gulp, president.
So I giggled, shivered and almost cried Sunday when Ah-nold, appearing on \NBC News' Meet the Press,"" forced that possibility upon me. He told Tim Russert he supports a constitutional amendment proposed by Utah Senator and patriotic music composer Orrin Hatch that would allow citizens not born in the U.S. to be president.
In fairness to Hatch, I think the amendment is a good idea. In fact, I would probably support it if the foreign-born citizen most poised to be president were not an Austrian body builder who once pronounced his ""love"" for Nazi war criminal Kurt Waldheim.
Sunday, Arnold tried to reassure people like me that he does not fancy himself a robot sent from the future to take over the executive branch. He said his support of Hatch's amendment has nothing to do with his desire to be President.
""I haven't thought about that at all,"" he said, daydreaming of tearing around on the White House lawn in one of his nine Hummers.
He must think no one will notice that he is both a Kennedy and a governor of California, categories from which at least one presidential or vice presidential candidate has come in a majority of elections since 1960. Add ""accused sex offender"" to his rsum and it looks like ""presidential candidate"" is the only job for which he is qualified.
Out of deference to Conan the Californian, Russert didn't pick at Arnie's legendary-and very presidential-lust for power. He skipped right over the Governator's unsettling 1974 Rolling Stone interview in which he told of a silly boyhood dream of being ""some dictator of a country or some savior like Jesus.""
Just to communicate how strange Sunday's interview was, Arnold addressed his desire for non-specific foreigners to be president after Russert showed a clip from the futuristic sci-fi bomb ""Demolition Man."" The movie's writers must have thought they were making a clever and preposterous joke when they wrote Sandra Bullock's character a line about how Arnie became president by the 61st Amendment to the Constitution. Ha.
I'll let the movie's writers off the hook for thinking that within Arnold's lifetime the Constitution would be amended 34 times when it took 215 years to pass the last 17.
But I can't forgive Arnold for naming one very real ""Demolition Man"" as a reason Hatch's amendment should pass.
Speaking of foreign-born Americans who have bettered our country and should be allowed a chance at the presidency, Arnold named Henry Kissinger.
He was speaking of the Kissinger who advised the illegal bombing of Cambodia and orchestrated the rise of General Pinochet in Chile. The Kissinger who once said: ""The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.""
I guess admiring Kissinger is a step forward from ""loving"" a Nazi.
I just hope Arnie learns to esteem more people not implicated in any crimes against humanity, especially if he ever runs for president. Lord only knows what his cabinet would look like.
