Sen. Schwarzenegger on Jay Leno

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was a bit evasive Thursday with talk show host Jay Leno when he asked him about running for Senate, but he is not ruling out the job.

“I see myself as a public servant, not as a politician,” Schwarzenegger said while sitting on, ‘The Tonight Show,’ couch. “I want to finish my term, and I'm absolutely convinced that if I do a good job, and a great job, we always will get a job after that.”

It was on Leno’s show in 2003 that Schwarzenegger announced his insurgent run against unpopular Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. He told Leno that he feels that after more than four years in office he has fulfilled one ‘03 goal, to, “bring both of the parties together,” sometimes to the dismay of state GOP leaders.

The Austrian-born Republican periodically reminds voters that he has his eye on some national office, such as when he spoke in San Diego on April 11th at the national convention of the GOP gay-and-lesbian group Log Cabin Republicans. He joked that instead of state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, “I think we need a constitutional amendment so that foreign-born citizens can run for president.”

Wearing a green tie and discussing Earth Week, Schwarzenegger said federal leaders, “are not really interested in fighting global warming…(The world) looks at us as the model…We have (proven) in California that you can protect the environment and protect the economy at the same time.”

The McCain-supporting governor naturally is at odds with his wife, California’s Obama-backing First Lady Maria Shriver. He told Leno that last year, “all of sudden there was the poster of Obama in our house…I stood up at the dinner table (and said), `I am for McCain….And Maria, you are wrong about this Obama thing!’ ”

“I was so lucky that she was out for dinner,” he said.