British. Can't be President. Next, please! ;-)

OzLady | October 24, 18:27 CET

OzLady beat me to it!

Nebula1400 | October 24, 18:30 CET

Well, he's more American than Roslin. ;-)

redders | October 24, 18:47 CET

Watcher puts him closer to the action of saving the world. President is sometimes on the opposite side. :)

quantumac | October 24, 19:38 CET

http://www.vote-adama.com/

worldwidestudios | October 24, 19:45 CET

Being a foreign Johnny i'd happily give him my imaginary US vote (as befits an imaginary candidate). Don't you need to be natural born American though, rather than just a citizen as the article implies ?

(guess he could be governor of somewhere but somehow I just don't see Giles relinquishing his nationality anyway, too big a part of him I reckon)

Optimus Prime on the other hand ? Shoe-in, mosdef.

Saje | October 24, 20:20 CET

Oh, sure, Saje, you point out that a British man can't be president, but would support a robot from the planet Cybertron? =)

kishi | October 24, 20:29 CET

Native Americans aside, all Americans are imported if you look at their roots :P So the whole deal about not beeing able to become President of the USA (good band btw) if you are not born there is just silly to me, haha. (like gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't able to run for presidentship)
Strange though, remember Martin van Buren? He was Dutch!

But hey, I'm not American so what do I know, lol. I'm just a happy camper when Obama is the next President.

[ edited by Krusher on 2008-10-24 20:47 ]

Krusher | October 24, 20:45 CET

Van Buren was the first US President to be born a US citizen. Yeah we take the US-born citizen thing pretty seriously. Also you can't have lived somewhere else in recent years either. It's in the Constitution.

I'd support Giles for Prime Minister (although I guess you all don't vote on that directly, right?) if not for the whole demon-summoning and Ben-killing past thing. I dunno, he seems to have a dark streak I wouldn't be comfortable with in that kind of position.

Sunfire | October 24, 21:03 CET

Why not Buffy?

NYPinTA | October 24, 21:24 CET

Hey she's old enough now. Summers 2012!

Sunfire | October 24, 21:30 CET

I think you have to be 35 to be president.

Simon | October 24, 21:35 CET

You do. By 2012, SMG will be old enough, but I don't think Buffy will...

Rachelkachel | October 24, 21:37 CET

Yeah, I think Buffy would only be about 32 by then (though doesn't she have two birthdays anyway ? Queen B indeed ;).

... if not for the whole demon-summoning and Ben-killing past thing. I dunno, he seems to have a dark streak I wouldn't be comfortable with in that kind of position.

I dunno, it might be refreshingly honest to have a politician's skeletons in the closet be, y'know, a skeleton in the closet ;).

(quite right though Sunfire, we vote for our local MP and then the leader of the party with the most MPs in the House of Commons becomes Prime Minister. I'd love to vote for any party that Giles led BTW BUT I have a horrible suspicion that Giles is probably a fairly dyed in the wool Tory and I draw the line at voting for them, even in my imagination ;)

Saje | October 24, 21:43 CET

Oh damn you're right, she is too young. So is Xander, and he was totally VP in my head.

Sunfire | October 24, 21:53 CET

Saje, ever seen our (Dutch) PM? I'd go for Giles any time!

Krusher | October 24, 21:54 CET

There is a very good West Wing/Buffy crossover fan fic out there. And yes it is does explain how the Mayor came to be the Secretary of Agriculture.

Simon | October 24, 21:55 CET

Giles for Canadian PM - he's multi-lingual, not just 'English/French'.

nutterbudgie | October 24, 23:04 CET

As I think redders was alluding to, Roslin ain't exactly American either. :-P

I would totally vote for Giles, even before Obama.

UnpluggedCrazy | October 25, 01:23 CET

Requirements to be the U.S. President:

1. 35 years old -- the only one Giles would fulfill, to the best of my knowledge
2. Natural-born citizen of the U.S., or citizen of the colonies at the time of their declared independence
3. Resident of the U.S. for 14 years (it is not specified whether those years need to be consecutive and/or immediately prior to your assumption of the office)

The requirement of natural-born citizenship was [ETA: reportedly] imposed to prevent Alexander Hamilton, America's first Secretary of the Treasury, from ever becoming President [ETA: though since Hamilton was a citizen at the time of independence, that shouldn't have been able to stop him]. As it is, I'm sort of glad we have it now -- if nothing else, it eliminates "celebrity candidacies," where very famous people from other countries decide to run for President. And I'm not just talking people like Tony Blair, who might at least be a credible candidate if he could meet the residency requirement...I don't think I could handle it if, say, Bono were to throw his hat in the ring. We're already (unfortunately) about to elect one very inexperienced rock star to the office. That's more than enough for me.

And Krusher, since American Indians originally crossed over to this continent on a land bridge between what is now Russia and what is now Alaska, I think you have to count them as "imported" too. :)

[ edited by BAFfler on 2008-10-25 06:46 ]

BAFfler | October 25, 06:40 CET

Bono is actually a very experienced rock star, he's been doing it for years.

(in some sense pretty much everyone is "imported" - even peoples living on the savannah in Africa very probably haven't always lived there in one unbroken stretch from the first evolution of modern humans to the present day. If you've been in a place since the last ice age or maybe just after then I think you have a fair claim to being 'aboriginal' - not saying American Indians have been BTW, don't know enough about it to judge)

Saje | October 25, 08:23 CET

Bono would be a better choice than most actual candidates.

UnpluggedCrazy | October 25, 12:04 CET

BAFfler: As I understand it, there was a deeper reason than Hamilton (and I have to admit, unsurprisingly from my politics, that I thnk he'd've made a good one) A lot of minor nobles, younger sons, deposed barons who'd tangled with Frederick the Great etc. were flaoting around. It was feared that one of them might attract a popular following in the US (which a lot did) then use that to get elected President and either eventually turn America into a monarchy or use it as source of money and troops for a political scheme in Europe or both. Heck,e arly in the Revolution there was tlak of offering The Young Pretender the "American crown."

Krusher: A lot of American especially in New York, New Jersey, and the Great Lakes Region are of Dutch ancestry; both Roosevelts were of Dutch stock. Van Buren, the 8th President was the first President born after 1776. The first 6 Presidents were born in the colonies and had parents born there. Jackson was born in the colonies but his parents were both born in Europe.

Saje;That's about right. Black Africans originated in West Africa and spread out. The natives of East Africa were of the Bushmen type until not too many thousand years ago. Blacks arrived in the Union of South Africa about the same time whites did.

[ edited by DaddyCatALSO on 2008-10-25 16:35 ]

[ edited by DaddyCatALSO on 2008-10-25 21:10 ]

DaddyCatALSO | October 25, 16:33 CET

Thank you all for the history lessons, very informative :)
And DaddyCatALSO, New York was once a Dutch settlement (New Amsterdam in 1625), so it makes sence that there are people of Dutch ancestry. Oh and Holland tunnel anyone? Too bad we lost it to the Brits :P

Question remains, why someone cannot become President if he or she isn't born in the US? Because someone said so?

Krusher | October 25, 21:47 CET

No way is Giles a Tory. I'm appalled at this suggestion

Let Down | October 26, 14:17 CET

Heh. He's clearly middle to upper middle class, from one of the home counties (or maybe Hampshire), public school educated (then maybe Oxbridge) and also seems fairly small 'c' conservative in his character (despite the guitar ;). None of which guarantees a Tory voter obviously but if I was given those criteria and then forced to bet, that's where i'd put my money.

I don't think any the less of him for it of course, some of my best friends are Tories ;).

Saje | October 26, 14:25 CET

Saje;That's about right. Black Africans originated in West Africa and spread out. The natives of East Africa were of the Bushmen type until not too many thousand years ago. Blacks arrived in the Union of South Africa about the same time whites did.

One reading of that is that you think different "types" arose independently in Africa and then spread around. That's not what the evidence currently says DaddyCatALSO, modern humans arose in Africa around 200,000 years ago and though it's hard to specify whereabouts most paleontologists think East Africa, around modern day Ethiopia (the oldest fossils are from there anyway) migrating around the continent above and below the Sahara as the climate changed and then out of Africa to the East into Asia, Australasia, across to the Americas etc.

There isn't any sense in which it's true to say "black Africans" arose apart from the rest of humanity, in fact, i'd say that "black African" isn't even particularly meaningful as a descriptive term (assuming you mean the sorts of surface characteristics people generally think of when they think of black people - darker skin, thicker lips, wider noses, protrusive lower skull etc. - then those vary throughout the continent even if many of the properties do arise together in West Africans). Genetically we're all basically from the same stock though, we just look different on the surface (i.e. in a statistically insignificant number of genes) probably due to a combination of "historical" accident and selective pressures from our environment (that environment including the people we're trying to have sex with BTW ;).

Saje | October 26, 15:04 CET

Saje; I was just saying that what many people,e specially Westerners, think of as the assembl;age of traits they think of as "black" or "Negroid" or "Congoid" or any other term used seems to have arisen as a grouped set of traits in Western Africa along the forested coasts and then those inhabitants spread out and mixed with other peoples, thus producing many variants.

Just like the traits I assume you and probably share first emerged as a grouped set in Northwestern Europe. And all of these in much less than the roughly quarter million years since the days of African Eve.

DaddyCatALSO | October 28, 00:39 CET