Governor Schwarzenegger’s address to the Republicans Tuesday night has started people thinking about the constitutional restrictions on who is eligible to be president. That provision, in Article 2, begins: “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.” It means that the California governor, who said he “always knew America was the place for me,” is ineligible to hold the presidency even if American voters want to give it to him.

The qualifications for president were discussed late in the federal convention that wrote the Constitution. On July 25, 1787, John Jay wrote to George Washington, “Permit me to hint, whether it would not be wise & seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Command in chief of the american army shall not be given to, nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen.”

Two days later, the convention introduced the language that would eventually make it into the Constitution without any formal debate. Chief Justice Story, writing in his Commentaries on the Constitution in 1833, argued that “the general propriety of the exclusion of foreigners, in common cases, will scarcely be doubted by any sound statesman. It cuts off all chances for ambitious foreigners, who might otherwise be intriguing for the office; and interposes a barrier against those corrupt interferences of foreign governments in executive elections, which have inflicted the most serious evils upon the elective monarchies of Europe.”

It’s true that governments once sought to win foreign influence and power by capturing the thrones of other nations. But it’s difficult to imagine Austria employing this tactic should Mr. Schwarzenegger become a contender for the White House – or Canada, for that matter, should Michigan’s Canadian-born governor, Jennifer Granholm, find herself on a national ticket. Even if Austria or Canada tried to exercise some undue influence, there’s little chance it would be successful. Mr. Schwarzenegger and Ms. Granholm are Americans now.

The more general possibility of manipulating the American political process is no trifle, which is why foreign nationals are not permitted to contribute to political campaigns. But the need for that regulation suggests that foreign influence could be exercised through native-born Americans as much as immigrants. Past American political campaigns have focused on a candidate’s allegedly inappropriate affection for a foreign country, whether it’s out of ideological or ethnic preferences. In the election of 1800, one native-born American, Jefferson, was accused, and not unjustly, of harboring a passionate attachment to France.

Voters are capable of evaluating those questions, especially when it comes to presidential candidates, who often crisscross the country building a national constituency. Americans have enjoyed the political and military leadership of foreign-born Americans before, whether it’s Henry Kissinger, who served as state secretary, or General John Shalikashvili, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Whatever controversies dogged their careers, none sprang from allegations stemming from their foreign birth.

The Founding Fathers did debate the qualifications for senator. Govr. Morris sought to raise to 14 from four the number of years a senator would have to have been an American citizen, urging, according to the records of the Convention, “the danger of admitting strangers into our public Councils.” Madison, according to the records, opposed the measure “because it will give a tincture of illiberality to the Constitution.”

Madison worried that “great numbers of respectable Europeans; men who love liberty and wish to partake its blessings” and who moved to America “would feel the mortification of being marked with suspicious incapacitations.” Moreover, argued Madison, if a foreign power wanted to infiltrate America, “Their bribes would be expended on men whose circumstances would rather stifle than excite jealousy & watchfulness in the public.”

No doubt Senator Hatch had the same ideas in mind when, more than two centuries later, he introduced a joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment that reads: “A person who is a citizen of the United States, who has been for 20 years a citizen of the United States, and who is otherwise eligible to the Office of President, is not ineligible to that Office by reason of not being a native born citizen of the United States.” Whatever the prospects of Mr. Hatch’s amendment, Mr. Schwarzenegger is surely helping the case.