Comment by LinuxBender | Hacker News Reader

Comment by LinuxBender | Hacker News Reader

From whitehouse.gov [1] The Constitution lists only three qualifications for the Presidency — the President must be at least 35 years of age, be a natural born citizen, and must have lived in the United States for at least 14 years.

I could see another charismatic actor [2] winning a presidential race but it will have to be one that meets the above criteria. It happened recently in Ukraine. It's happened in the US Ronald Reagan. The best candidates I have seen were all comedians but unfortunately they are smart enough to not want the job.

Perhaps Arnold could be appointed as Secretary of Defense. [3]

[1] - https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/our-governm...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_actor-politicians

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secretary_of_Def...

I could see this going to court if he ran with the outcome being the equal protection clause winning out over that. I might be misremembering, but I think that clause was to keep England from sneaking someone in to take the presidency of the nascent United States.

I agree it could go to court but then it is up against this process [1] which is harder than it appears as written. Judges at every level have no authority to do anything beyond starting the amendment process. The member states of this process would have to see a significant benefit to put in that kind of effort and probably a lot of money and back scratching to amend the constitution. The constitution has only been amended 27 times of the 33 proposals in 247 years. I think the closest one could get would be to appoint Arnold as Secretary of Defense. That is just below commander and chief secondary military command role of the US president during peace time.

Perhaps an interesting study would be to determine if the US being as divided as it is currently would help or hinder the amendment process.

[1] - https://www.senate.gov/reference/reference_index_subjects/Co...

Huh? The 14th amendment has already been part of the US constitution for 155 years.

Also, what is this about judges starting the amendment process?

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