After visiting the Reagan library during my quiet Thanksgiving weekend, I learned many “wonderful” new things about the former president, events that in my native Mexico had been explained to me from a very different prospective.

I learned of his never-ending effort to fight communism, and the overthrowing of democratic elected presidents in countries south of the border. You know those places that most people really do not care about and where they have civil unrest at all times.

I began to share my impressions with my dearest brother, who claims to be a conservative, and has voted Republican in the past. I love my brother regardless, no one is perfect. What really got me upset was to see that he was comparing our current governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, with the 40th president of the United States.

I am not very fond of Ronald Reagan but two wrongs do not make a right. However, I think if Reagan was alive, he would have died before allowing such a comparison.

Then I became furious when my lovely brother said that Schwarzenegger would make a good president and that he should run in the 2008 election. Clearly my brother had become delusional. I responded in a very sweet way, like Mexican women always talk to the males in the family, that thanks to the constitution it was impossible.

What came immediately to my mind was another problem that I cannot even begin to imagine that the Terminator could be able to amend the constitution to his favor.

The scary thought of having another president that you could barely understand while speaking frightens me. We have enough with nuclear weapons, we clearly do not need another president with a speech problem.

The Constitution of the United States requires the president to be a citizen by birth, which thanks to God, Schwarzenegger is not.

Just to play devil’s advocate and to contradict my brother, I said that Reagan really had a charming personality and was an excellent public speaker. He was even called “the great communicator,” and those two qualities had nothing to do with “the Governator,” whose dry personality and lack of clear speech made him more of a cartoonish character than a legend like Reagan was.

One of the few good things, maybe the only one, was Reagan’s emigration reform that 20 years ago legalized millions of immigrants.

Schwarzenegger will never do anything nice for the Hispanic community. We all know he dislikes Hispanics immigrants and is not afraid to voice it. His last observation on how our culture lacks “assimilation” to the American culture was very clear.

In a press conference he said that Asians assimilated better to American culture. The governator needs to go back to college and learn history and sociology.

He does not understand our culture at all and his persistent denigrating remarks will not help him if he decides to run for senator. Schwarzenegger needs to take a history class. I could recommend an excellent professor here at CSUN.

On the other hand, Schwarzenegger himself should learn that the American culture does not share some or many of his views.

If supporting Nazi war criminals (Kurt Waldheim) like he does is assimilating to a culture, than I guess I am better being just a Mexican and not a Mexican- American.

Schwarzenegger is only fair in one aspect: He dislikes all Latinos even his fellow Republican Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia of Cathedral City, who is of Puerto Rican descent. In a tape-recorded comment, the governator said Latina women with black blood were “very hot” and it was not a compelement.

Then he used the “they are all are the same” comment that is so widely use dwhen referring to Latinos.

I am not sure if Reagan shared Schwarzenegger’s dislike of Latinos. If he did, I do not think he would have ever worded them that way.

The only two things the “great communicator” and the “governator” have in common are that both came from the entertainment industry and both led California.

Reagan was a conservative Republican and Schwarzenegger is seen by many as a liberal Republican. To me, a Republican is a Republican and that is enough for my distrust and dislike.