the blog quebecois

Diane Francis:

Forget Hillary and the others who have made Obama's short list of running-mate possibilities. If he decides a female will help enhance his electoral hopes, then Arianna Huffington should be high on the list, if not at the top. She is the Queen of the Left in the United States and she dominates the blogosphere and broadcast waves with her no-nonsense viewpoint.

Good grief. This one is truly off the wall, out of left field. (Or look back a few years, and it`s out of right field.)

Leaving aside the erratic Ms. Huffington`s political leanings, there`s a minor roadblock in the form 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; 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.

Since the Vice President must be available to serve as President in case of death or incapacity; and since the President must be a native-born citizen (the `fourteen-year Resident` clause is unclear and has never been litigated), but most observers agreed that it precluded any Presidential ambitions by people like Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm; and since Huffington was born in Athens, Greece . . . well, it was an interesting idea for a newspaper column, but that`s as far as it`s going.