Schwarzenegger 2020: Equal Opportunity to Govern

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Icelander

T

However, the various legislative, constitutional and legal issues surrounding the Equal Opportunity to Govern movement have been major political news for years .

Truth of this statement would be a sign that your ASBs can do as they please and might as well get on with the job.

Fairness for foreign-born celebrity-politicians is such a "WTF?" concept that Alt-Fred undoubtedly has a tin foil-lined hat already.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Truth of this statement would be a sign that your ASBs can do as they please and might as well get on with the job.

Fairness for foreign-born celebrity-politicians is such a "WTF?" concept that Alt-Fred undoubtedly has a tin foil-lined hat already.

Would that honestly be the strangest political development that you can think of in the last 20 years?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Would that honestly be the strangest political development that you can think of in the last 20 years?

If the measurement was disproportionate results to actual cause the answer would be "yes".

As I've tried to convey to you, while there would be few people in our timeline who would oppose this there would be no one in favor of it who was not planning to profit from an AS administration.

Now that I think of it I did hear the idea floated casually while AS was at the height of his popularity but the mention came from a political partisan who thought he might get a reliable GOP admistration out of it. The idea went nowhere and our AS' popularity declined sharply after an infidelity scanal and his leaving office.

You may find our current President inexplicable but there are people who really want this "Drain the Swamp!" concept carried out. It's most of the core of the "Run against Washington" trope. It's a message currently so strong that weaknesses of the messenger don't matter to the people who want it.

[awesomenessofme1]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

As I've tried to convey to you, while there would be few people in our timeline who would oppose this there would be no one in favor of it who was not planning to profit from an AS administration.

I might disagree with the first part of that. I think there would be a lot of people at least passively opposed to this and a decent number strongly opposed.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

I might disagree with the first part of that. I think there would be a lot of people at least passively opposed to this and a decent number strongly opposed.

<shrug> We may have a problem of scale. Is a "lot of people" enough to fill a medium-sized stadium or 10% of the US population? You can fill a lot of stadiums and still not amount to much on Election Day.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Now that I think of it I did hear the idea floated casually while AS was at the height of his popularity but the mention came from a political partisan who thought he might get a reliable GOP admistration out of it.

It gets floated for various people. In late 2001, there were Americans who wanted to draft Tony Blair, the then British Prime Minister, as the next US president. He gave a very eloquent speech to Congress shortly after the 9/11 attacks, and some people were overly impressed. I had to explain that he was completely ineligible.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by johndallman

It gets floated for various people. In late 2001, there were Americans who wanted to draft Tony Blair, the then British Prime Minister, as the next US president. He gave a very eloquent speech to Congress shortly after the 9/11 attacks, and some people were overly impressed. I had to explain that he was completely ineligible.

I noticed this at the time. I was puzzled at why he was less popular at home than he was here. I could name you several of our politicians who appeared more popular in the UK and other foreign lands who I at least would have traded away for Blair.

Perhaps there's some sort of analog to grass being greener on the other side of the fence.

Please note how delicately I am tip-toeing around actual political opinions and names.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by johndallman

It gets floated for various people.

And then goes nowhere because it's an awful lot of work for not much benefit.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I noticed this at the time. I was puzzled at why he was less popular at home than he was here. I could name you several of our politicians who appeared more popular in the UK and other foreign lands who I at least would have traded away for Blair.

He could be eloquent about almost anything. As people noticed that, it stopped being effective, and he didn't have much else to offer apart from overconfidence.

Originally Posted by Anthony

And then goes nowhere because it's an awful lot of work for not much benefit.

Yup!

[weby]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Congress can indeed pass a law that would purport to define 'natural-born citizen' and/or define who is eligible for the Presidency. If they did, the courts would then rule on the constitutionality of that statue (because someone would inevitably challenge it).

The natural born citizen does not seem to be defined in the constitution, so that is the possibility that I see be it legislative or courts without requiring a constitutional amendment that seems fairly unlikely.

However, if Congress passed an Equal Opportunity to Govern statue that essentially removed the distinction between 'natural-born citizen' and 'citizen', I'm far from convinced that courts would necessarily strike it down. As are, I note, several constitutional scholars, mostly because they feel courts would hesitate to rule based on the political-question doctrine.

Surely a candidate would have standing, either one prevented from putting his name on the ballot or an opponent wishing to challenge such ballots if it is allowed.

One option for my Alien Space Bats would be to find someone, in the period between 2011-2018, to run for President 2012 or 2016 with the explicit purpose of getting a case in front of a court in order to yield a precedent that Schwarzenegger could use when it had been established.

Basically Arnold himself could be the test case, make a try in 2016 and have him be struck down and then have the case work it through the courts in time for his 2020 run. His campaign message could then include the "The establisment tried to not allow you the choice of me, so show them wrong"

Obviously, under ordinary circumstances they wouldn't, because of the political-question doctrine and a general, sensible reluctance to seek out controversy, but as noted before, influencing a small number of judges with ASB methods is exponentially easier than influencing a majority of Congress (let alone a supermajority and all the state legislators needed).

And the thing is.. influencing some other influential people to champion the cause publicly even before the court case could make the court decision seem more "normal"

Originally Posted by Icelander

I'm assuming that a rival candidate would have both legal standing and a pretty strong motive to challenge the constitutionality of a statue which made alt-Schwarzenegger eligible. After all, in the world of the setting, his political skill, charisma and popularity has grown by leaps and bounds from what it is in the real world and by the date in my setting (December 30, 2018), anyone who wants to run in 2020 must worry quite a lot about alt-Schwarzenegger.

Well the thing could have been settled before the election as suggested by my arnold2016 suggestion above.