The Liberalization of Ahnuld:
"It's been interesting to observe the metamorphosis of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor of California. After the circus of the recall election that placed him in Sacramento, Arnold was full of the swagger and arrogance that embodied most of the Republican majority. Then he pressed on with his ill-fated Special Election (that had he considered polls beforehand, he would have realized he had little chance of prevailing). Despite running with a significant lead over his opponents for his second term, there's no question that Arnold felt the sea change away from the Republican arrogance of the last ten years. Duly chastened, Arnold started his second term embracing centrism and calling for true bipartisanship.
Rather than empty rhetoric, it really does look like Arnold means it. He's demanding a raise in the emissions standards. This week, he introduced a proposal that is near and dear to many liberals: Universal Health Care. While neither proposal is perfect, it's certainly more concession towards bipartisanship than we have seen in a long, long time."
The Los Angeles Times editorial calls for changing the Constitution to let Ahnuld run:
"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."
6 comments:
He's not that popular that the people will support a constitutional amendment for him.
Now Jesse Ventura could run, and might be someone to watch especially if the Republicans cease to remain a viable national party. I haven't given a lot of thought to it myself, so I'm expressing no opinion except that it is a possibility.
I don't know how well he'd do in the 'heartland' where his Hollywood ways and his accent would really trip him up. He's also not a 'true' Republican and too Republican to qualify as a Democrat.
Ventura I know nothing about.
It will be interesting.
Ventura was governor of Minnesota, and has been aligned mainly with the Ross Perot-offshoot patriot whatever-ya-call-it party, but it was a really factionalized thing and presumably still is.
And I do think electoral reform is a good idea to prevent the bipartisan shut-out of outside views.
Don't get me started on the Electoral College.
For good or bad, as a country we move extremely slowly on changing the Constitution, but somethings should be obvious they need fixing.
Do we run better or worse because of a two party system? I don't know enough about comparing countries political parties and their impact to know. All I see is a lot of extremely dissatisfied people and less people voting.
In a perfect world we'd have a Condorcet voting system, which tends to reach a consensus of opinion and avoids the extremes, while allowing all points of view to be heard and preference ranked.
How come when I read your posts, whig, I end up having to google something?
Off to find out what Condoret is all about.
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