Why? Assuming they retain their reason and don't mutate into some form that poses an immediate threat to others, why would they be automatically removed from office?
Because, if as shown in the movie the world really hates and fears mutants, or at least the leaders do, I wouldn't see them accepting a mutant as a leader.
But would they have a choice? A lot of people don't accept Barack Obama as president, but they can't get rid of him until Election Day 2012 at the earliest. Lots of leaders have people who hate and/or fear them, but that doesn't stop them from staying in office.
Further, when all the world leaders are turned into mutants, there would be fear around the world that mutants are taking over. It would cause more chaos than good, and thus isn't a very well thought out plan.
Except that, as I said, it's a mistake to assume that Magneto's professed desire to make the world work better is his actual motivation here. That's just his excuse. To him, it's more about poetic justice, punishing his persecutors by turning them into the thing they've persecuted and forcing them to live with being what they hate.
Mutation could be thought of as a medical condition, but one that could affect a person's mind as well as body. I don't see people accepting a leader whose entire genetic structure was tampered with and trusting that his/her mind has not also been altered.
But they'd have to prove it. You can't throw someone out of office just on suspicion or insinuation, or we'd have people getting thrown out of the presidency on a monthly basis. The Republicans spent half the Clinton administration trying to prove that President Clinton was unfit to lead, and they even impeached him, but they failed to prove their case. More lately, people have been claiming for years that President Obama wasn't born in the US and isn't qualified to be President, but that hasn't changed the facts. Accusation of incompetence is not enough, not in this country at least. Maybe in other countries you could get a vote of no confidence, and in less democratic countries you could get coups. But it's bizarre to assume it would automatically happen in every single case, as if laws and constitutions didn't exist.
But he would make them rethink their assumptions. They would fear and hate mutants. Did 9/11 make Americans warm up to Arabs?
Initially, it kinda did. One of the few things the Bush administration did right was that it initially made a big push toward education, insisting that it wasn't about Arabs or Muslims and that intolerance toward Arab- and Muslim-Americans was not acceptable. And it helped that most of the Muslim world deplored al-Qaeda's actions and was eager to help us bring them down. (Although then Bush invaded Iraq and threw away all that progress on both sides.)
I always thought the mutants in the movie arguing against Mutant Registration was stupid.
There is a guy that can shoot energy blasts from his eyes and kill people. Guy with metal claws. Guy that can turn to steal and bash people's heads in.
The most dangerous like mutants like Xavier and Magento can destroy entire cities without much effort.
OF COURSE they should be registered. They are far more dangerous than any person with a gun.
But that kind of generalization is an unfair prejudice. Why should someone with a harmless mutation, like, say, purple skin or butterfly wings or the ability to understand any language, be treated as no different from someone who can destroy cities with his mind? That's gross bigotry. It's as immoral and unjust as, say, throwing Japanese-Americans into internment camps after Pearl Harbor. It's persecuting the innocent majority for the actions of a few.
If someone's
specific mutation can function as a lethal weapon, then there could be a legal basis for regulating it. But generalizing it to
all mutants regardless of their specific powers is obviously wrong.
Not to mention the difficulties with defining what a mutant is in the first place. To repost most of a comment I made on
Law and the Multiverse:
Mutation, as Patrick Stewart’s voiceover sagely informed us, is the key to our evolution. We are human because our genes mutated from those of earlier hominids, and there are still ongoing mutations spreading through the human population today. A mutation that allowed lactose tolerance in adulthood emerged in Northern European cattle-herders 5-6000 years ago and independently in Africa 3-4000 years ago. So those of us who can digest milk as adults are mutants compared to those who are lactose-intolerant as adults. (That’s right, I’m mutant and proud!) And what about the mutation that causes colorblindness? Or the mutations that give people blue eyes or red hair? For that matter, a study back in June announced that every human’s genome contains an average of 60 new mutations, most of which have no effect.
So we’re dealing with one hell of a slippery slope here. When every human on the planet has dozens of mutated genes, when many (or, arguably, all) widespread human traits are a consequence of mutation, how in the world can the law define a meaningful difference between a normal human and a mutant? Basing it on mutations that create unusual appearances would mean that every blue-eyed redhead would have to be thrown in a camp or shot on sight. Basing it on mutations that impart unusual abilities would mean that every adult who can digest cheese would have to be put away. So where do you draw the line?
I suppose you could try to define some sort of cutoff date — someone is a mutant if they manifest significant mutations that didn’t exist prior to, say, 1945. But that would mean Wolverine and Apocalypse wouldn’t count as mutants. And it might require extensive genetic analysis to confirm whether a mutation existed before a certain generation. And you’d still need to define the cutoff line for a significant mutation. Is it a mutant ability that can be used to inflict harm? Perhaps, but that can be defined very broadly. Flying isn’t intrinsically harmful, but Warren Worthington could always, say, drop a rock on someone’s head from a height.
