Valerie White had each fingernail carefully painted to resemble a tiny, shiny American flag. No detail was too small for the big night, the night she put on her sequined vest, and her husband, Lyn, his flag-decorated tie, so they could welcome Arnold Schwarzenegger to Madison Square Garden.
It was Schwarzenegger's night in prime time. The bodybuilder turned movie star turned politician, who won his latest role as California governor in a recall vote last year, took center stage to lend his moderate image, his immigrant-made-good story, to a convention seeking to define the Republican Party once again as a big-tent party.
"He's what America is all about," said Valerie White, an alternate delegate from Asheboro, North Carolina. "You can come to this country and be successful."
Schwarzenegger's immediate job in speaking to the convention was to help promote the re-election of President Bush. But his appearance could not help but pump up his own political prospects.
Conventions provide a chance to preen before the party faithful, an especially valuable opportunity for moderate Republicans like Schwarzenegger. And he wasted no time in trying to burnish his Republican credentials with biting partisan remarks.
"Speaking of acting, one of my movies was called True Lies," he said. "And that's what the Democrats should have called their convention."
His speech was punctuated with cheers from the delegates, and chants of "Four more years!" and "USA! USA! USA!" And even Republicans who disagree with him on social issues had nothing but praise for him on Tuesday night.
"Arnold Schwarzenegger is the John Wayne of the current generation," said the Reverend Jerry Falwell, the founder of the Moral Majority. "His speech will motivate people to vote in California and across the country."
Some of his supporters are even talking of Schwarzenegger as presidential material, though that would take an amendment to the Constitution, which permits only native-born citizens to serve as president. Schwarzenegger was born in Austria. Some people in the hall were uncomfortable with that notion despite their enthusiasm for him.
"I'd hate to see that happen right now," Lyn White said of permitting foreign-born citizens to be president. "You hear about things like sleeper cells. It might be dangerous."
But even those concerns could not dim the excitement over seeing Schwarzenegger taking the stage to speak in support of Bush -- or quash the talk of a possible White House run.
"I think he's very good for the Republican Party," said Don Yost of Key West, Florida, a guest of the Bush-Cheney campaign to the convention, who said he would like to see the requirement changed.
Senator Orrin Hatch, Utah, has proposed such an amendment, which is pending in the Judiciary Committee. It would allow a person to become president 20 years after becoming a citizen; that would cover Schwarzenegger, who has been a citizen since 1983. In the House, Democratic Representative Vic Snyder, Arkansas, has introduced a proposal would allow a naturalized citizen to serve as president after 35 years.
Hatch "feels the purpose of the native-born requirement has long passed," said Margarita Tapia, press secretary to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. The founders' intent, she noted, was to prevent a European monarch from ruling the fledgling country.
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