Bloomberg's joke has experts abuzz

Los Angeles: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg talked playfully this week about running on a US presidential ticket with Arnold Schwarzenegger, but the legal obstacles that prevent the Austrian-born California governor from serving as president also would block him from the nation's No 2 job, legal scholars say.

As a foreign-born citizen, Schwarzenegger is prohibited by the US Constitution from becoming first citizen. And the 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804, bans naturalised Americans from serving as vice-president.

Those prohibitions might be open to legal challenge, however, and it is not clear what would happen if foreign-born candidates were to run anyway, several legal scholars said.

"The law is very clear, but it's not 100 per cent clear that the courts would enforce that law rather than leave it to the political process," said Columbia University Law School professor Michael Dorf, an expert in constitutional law.

Yale Law School professor Jack Balkin said the "terrible rule" should be dropped.

Schwarzenegger aides say the issue is not commanding his attention. Political advisers, however, have examined it and concluded he is ineligible for either office.

"There would be a fight to see who would be the presidential candidate and who would be the vice presidential candidate," Bloomberg joked about teaming up with Schwarzenegger. "He would want to arm wrestle for the top spot; I would want to check the Constitution."