Apparently, the Clinton News Network isn’t the only news organization whose policy is that if their own editors haven’t bothered to look up the 12th Amendment, there must not be one. Today’s editorial on Schwarzenegger’s speech at the G.O.P. convention leads off with the following intriguing thought, which the editors do not rebut:

Tony Quinn, a GOP political consultant in Sacramento, raised an intriguing possibility in a newsletter Tuesday, hours before California’s governor stepped onto the podium in New York: The U.S. Constitution doesn’t seem to bar Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger from becoming vice president.

“Seem to?” Either the Constitution bars Arnold from being Vice-President or it doesn’t. Let’s find out which. Start by assuming that anyone who is qualified to be President will probably also qualify to be Vice-President. Can you think of any reason or reasons why Arnold Braunschweiger would be disqualified from becoming President? Any at all? Do they have some prohibiting ex-bodybuilders to the oval office? Nah. Actors? Nope, that’s been done already. Oh wait, I know, maybe you’re not supposed to elect anyone who talks funny. No, that’s not it, either. Maybe a ban on electing guys suspected of groping women in the past? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Oh, wait, I think I know the answer. It’s all coming back to me now, from that one day in high school when I actually went to civics class rather than hang out with all my pre-journalism student-friends who were playing hooky and getting stoned. That day, the teacher said something about the olden days when the word “unconstitutional” meant that something actually conflicted with a provision of a written “constitution,” as opposed to the word’s more contemporary meaning, which is simply “I don’t like it.” We were told that this “constitution” – that long-forgotten, written constitution from days of yore – imposed certain restrictions on who could and could not be President, to wit:

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; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

To date, courts have upheld this rule against all the penumbras, emanations and other bases on which a constitutional provision might ordinarily be found unconstitutional. Until that changes, these rules stick, so to find out whether Arnold Strong can be President, let’s go down the list of requirements. Age 35 or older? Check. Fourteen year residency? Check. U.S. Citizen in 1789? Um… no,. He may be a bit old to be running around on the silver screen pretending to be a robot, but he’s not 215, yet. Natural born citizen? Well, maybe, if you count him as a “natural” based on his childhood dreams of coming to America, but otherwise, no. Hollywood, we have a problem.

Now that we’ve established that Arnold can’t be President, let’s see what the rules are for Vice-Presidents. Tony Quinn and the L.A. Times say that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t “seem” to bar Arnold from seeking that office. Let’s see if they are right. Take a look at Amendment 12, which seems to say:

The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, blah blah blah blah Vice-President, and of the number of blah blah blah blah blah sign and certify, and transmit blah blah blah of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;–The President of blah shall blah blah blah and the person having the greatest number of blah shall blah, if such blah be a majority of the blah blah blah; and if no person have such majority, then blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blahbbity frickin’ blah. This is soooooooooooooo boring. Let’s just send the editorial to press now, and call it a day, K?

Of course, that’s not what the 12th Amendment really says, just what it seems to say, if you happen to be a five year old, an L.A. Times editor, or anyone else with an unusually short attention span. If not, the 12 Amendment won’t “seem” much like that at all, especially when you get to the last sentence, which neither Tony Quinn nor the Dog Trainer could seem to find:

But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.

That doesn’t leave a lot of room for seeming, does it?

UPDATE: I have alerted both Tony Quinn and the Dog Trainer Reader’s [Non-]Representative to the error. Quinn acknowledged the error; the Trainer did not (yet?).

UPDATE x2: As of 9/3/04, the Dog Trainer has yet to acknowlege its error, even though it did run a letter by a law professor pointing out the obvious.

UPDATE x3: Apparently, there’s some maximum I.Q. requuirement to write anything for the Times. Reader Ralph Shaffer alerts me in a comment to a recent an op-ed by Republican strategist Dan Schnur, which opines that it is the 23rd Amendment that bars Schwarzenegger from the Presidency. Perhaps that explains why we had so many naturalized citizens as commander in chief from 1790 through 1961. Check out the comment; it gets worse.

FINAL UPDATE: The Trainer finally issued a correction on 9/4 (h/t: Patterico), three days after I alerted them to their boner and one day after the law professor’s letter ran. Unfortunately, even the correction could stand a little correcting:

[T]he 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804, closed [the] prospect [of a naturalized citizen becoming Vice President] by declaring that the qualifications for vice president were the same as for president.

That’s technically true, but still misleading, as that prospect was never really “open” in the first place. Prior to the 12th Amendment, the vice presidency went to the presidential candidate who came in second. It is highly unlikely that any naturalized citizen would have run for President, knowing he was unqualified to win, but hoping to come in second so he can serve as Vice President under the guy he was pretending to run against.