Schwarzenegger: “I Would Like to be President”

The governor of California speaks of his ambitions and reveals his “trick of the trade: “If I had not been an actor, my job as a politician would have been much more difficult.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger for president. This is the electoral campaign slogan that the governor of California dreams of for his future. He confessed this last night during the broadcast of CBS’s “60 Minutes,” in an interview focused on his experience in politics and on his future.

Interviewed by anchor Scott Pelley, Schwarzenegger said he does not aim for any other place in politics after the end of his second term as governor of California. No post, except one: that behind the desk in the Oval Office. “Absolutely yes,” Schwarzenegger replied when Pelley asked if he would like to become president: an ambition that, however, is destined to remain unsatisfied because the United States constitution requires that any aspiring president is an American citizen by birth, while Schwarzenegger was born in Austria and was naturalized in 1983.

In a dark year for California, marked by a long series of devastating fires, the financial and real estate crises and therefore a serious and real risk of economic cracking of the state, the talk could not help but drift to other problems of the Golden State and the governor’s beliefs about ecology, energy saving, and the responsibility of climate change in the environmental problems faced by California. Schwarzenegger is in fact noted for his green challenge given to his own government, to deal with the struggle to halt emissions of greenhouse gases and the promotion of alternative energies.

The governor has also abandoned already-known arguments and has proved a less-known aspect of his work in politics: the importance that his experience as an actor has had in his tenure at the helm of California, and may have for anyone engaged in politics. “People think that the show business is concentrated in Hollywood, but instead I think that Ronald Reagan was right,” Schwarzenegger stated, “If I had not had experience as an actor, this would be a truly difficult job.”