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When California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his intention to run for US President someday, he sparked a heated Constitutional debate.

Must Presidents be Born on US Soil?
Currently, one must be born on US soil to run for the highest office in the country. (Obviously, the same is not true for other political positions.)The Austrian-born Schwarzenegger would like to see the Constitution amended and he's promised to work for just that. Democrats are obviously very uncomfortable with the idea of Arnie as Commander in Chief, but are their arguments anti-Arnold, anti-Republican, anti-Hollywood, or simply sound reasoning? Would they have the same response if a foreign-born, influential Democrat were launching this campaign?

Does the Constitution Still Make Sense?
Anytime people talk about amending the Constitution, they ruffle a lot of feathers. The entire United States legal system is based on this document that was authored by our founding fathers. The more we alter it, the more we're, in essence, saying that our founders didn't get it entirely right.

At the same time, the Constitution was adopted in 1787 and a few things have changed since then. The country is much larger geographically; the racial, cultural and ethnic composition is different; worldwide transportation is fast and affordable, and globalization has made the globe a smaller place altogether. Socially, we've progresses beyond the subservient wife and racially-based class system.

Children Born to Military Personnel Abroad Can Never Run
So, Schwarzenegger, a state governor married into a leading political family, can't run for President because he was born an Austrian citizen, in Austria. But an American baby born to US citizen parents abroad, even to, say, a US president, and then raised in the US for life, can never run for president either.

A Swahili baby, born to non-citizen parents vacationing on US soil, and then taken back to Swahili and raised there, can become President though. The child of illegal border crossers from Central or South America, who crossed the border simply to birth a child in the States, can run for president. See where this argument is going?

Democrats may not like the idea of Schwarzenegger for president. They may be right that he is less than an ideal candidate, but not because he was born abroad. (His alleged idealization of Hitler and sexual harassments are a different subject altogether).

In an age when a woman nine-months pregnant can get to the opposite side of the globe in 24 hours or less, and back again, the born-on-American-soil clause may indeed be outdated.