WASHINGTON: Arnold for president?

It would be impossible now. But in the new Washington — where the unthinkable occasionally becomes the commonplace — it just might happen someday.

As Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger basked in his victory on Wednesday after a special California governor’s election, there is a proposed constitutional amendment in Congress that could remove one hurdle to a Schwarzenegger presidency: the requirement that presidents be natural born American citizens.

Sponsored by Utah Republican and Schwarzenegger booster Orrin Hatch in the Senate and by Rep. Vic Snyder, an Arkansas Democrat, among others in the House, two similar amendments propose to do away with a provision put in by the framers of the US Constitution.

“No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of president,” the framers wrote in the Constitution’s Article II.

What they had in mind then was keeping any person with foreign or royalist interests from becoming the US chief executive.

The proposed amendment, however, would allow naturalized citizens to become president as long as they had been citizens for 20 years in the case of the Senate bill and 35 years in the House bill.

Introduced in June and July, before Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy for California governor on NBC’s “Tonight” show on Aug 6, the proposals target what their sponsors consider an offensive anachronism.

CONFOUNDING CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who is a co-sponsor of the House version, decried the current law’s “discrimination against American citizens based on their birth.”

He and other sponsors have said the amendment has nothing to do with any potential Schwarzenegger run, but instead would eliminate a double standard that puts immigrants at a disadvantage.

The conventional wisdom around Washington has been that these proposals will not become law any time soon. As a constitutional amendment, it would require approval by two-thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification by the legislatures of three-quarters of the states — a process that takes years.

But conventional wisdom has had a way of wilting in Washington over the last five years.

Starting in 1998, President Bill Clinton was embroiled in the scandal over sex and prevarication in the White House that led to his impeachment, only the second time a US president has gone through this process.

The impeachment happened not long after the 1998 elections that saw the Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich leave his post in political disgrace and the surprise election of Jesse Ventura, a former professional wrestler, a rowdy radio personality and friend of Schwarzenegger, as Minnesota’s governor.

Then came the presidential campaign of 2000, which seemed like a textbook exercise up until election night when the votes were too close to declare a winner. More than a month later, with the disputed election firmly focused on irregularities in Florida, the Supreme Court decided the election by a vote of 5-4.—Reuters