Could Schwarzenegger's Next Move Be to Capitol Hill?

SAN FRANCISCO—Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Republican governor of California, acknowledged this week that he would like to run for president if the Constitution allowed it, offering a rare glimpse into the mind of a political celebrity whose tenure is coming to an end.

"Yeah, absolutely," Schwarzenegger said on 60 Minutes after being asked if he wished he could seek the nation's highest office. "I think that I am always a person that looks for the next big goal. And I love challenges. I always set goals that are so high, that are almost impossible to achieve. Because then, you're always hungry for climbing and climbing. Because it's always interesting. The climb is always interesting. When you get there, you just have to pick another goal."

The Austrian-born former actor, whose second term as governor will end next year, is barred from running for higher office by a constitutional provision that requires the president to be a natural-born citizen. It would take a constitutional amendment to pave the way for him to vie for the White House, something most political experts consider unlikely.

Which leaves Schwarzenegger, 61, facing a difficult question: What next? After last month's election, the movie star turned politician was considered a potential candidate for President-elect Barack Obama's cabinet, possibly as energy secretary. But now that Obama's cabinet choices are made—with Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize-winning director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, getting the energy nod, instead—Schwarzenegger's political future appears increasingly uncertain.

No one doubts that the former bodybuilder and no-holds-barred straight talker, who famously called state legislators "girlie men" during a round of budget negotiations, has created a unique niche for himself in the Republican Party. After leaping from Hollywood to the governor's office in a hotly contested recall election in 2003, Schwarzenegger has emerged remarkably intact from a series of early, high-profile stumbles. Two years after he took office, voters rejected much of his reformist agenda, turning down his proposals to curb state spending and redraw the state's political map.

Still, the governor seemed to learn his lesson from the experience, and since winning re-election, he has largely reinvented himself as a wholly original blend of global warming advocate, social liberal, and fiscal conservative—a political template, many experts say, that other Republicans would do well to follow.

In the past few years, Schwarzenegger has steered clear of both major controversy and political orthodoxy. He sued the Bush administration's Environmental Protection Agency over its refusal to allow California to impose cuts in greenhouse emissions and stared down the Big Three automakers when they refused to make their cars more fuel efficient. In 2006, he signed landmark legislation that required California, in the absence of any federal global warming regulation, to lower its carbon emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020—a 25 percent reduction.

Schwarzenegger has shown his political independence on everything from the culture wars to balancing the budget. He has not only openly supported same-sex marriage; he has also displayed a willingness to shed some of the GOP's antitax ideology, offering to meet Democrats in the state legislature halfway to solve California's perennial budget problems.

Which isn't to say the Governator has gone soft: Last week, Schwarzenegger vetoed a Democratic plan to raise $9.3 billion in new taxes to help close a looming $40 billion budget gap, saying the lawmakers' budget package did not contain sufficient cuts.