This question is the “oft-asked question” that Exapno Mapcase and DSYoungEsq were referring to. Earlier threads that have addressed (and pretty much exhausted) this topic:
Could Hillary choose Bill as her running mate?
Could Bill Clinton Run As Vice President?
American President and terms in office
Under the terms of the 12th Amendment, if you’re not eligible to be elected President, you can’t be elected Vice President.
A literalist reading would assume that a President could nominate an otherwise ineligible ex-President to be appointed Vice President, and that he could succeed as President if the incumbent dies or resigns, since the 22nd prohibits being elected President more than twice. However, most people go by intent, which would say, “The purpose of the 22nd was to ensure nobody serves more than two terms, with an exception made for a former-VP who succeeded and served less than half a term as President.” This however depends on, you guessed it, emanations and penumbras.
And there the matter stands. You have to work the interplay of the 12th, 22nd, and 25th Amendments to get the answer, and different people come to different conclusions.
By a literal reading of the amendment, there would be no Constitutional obstacle to a recurring President who never actually got elected to that position, but who merely succeeded to it following the death of one elected president after another. However, in addition to the usual political difficulties in such hypotheticals, where the people would not stand for an end-run around the Constitution, such a black widow vice-president would have an increasingly difficult time finding willing running mates.
I’ll take the question as answered. Thank’s for the responses.
Well, one could always do what President Russell P. Kramer and President Matt Douglas did. As single termers, Douglas was able to run again, with Kramer as his VP, and then the two swapped places at the end of Douglas’s term. Or am I the only one who saw the documentary about them? 
The swap (presumably) wouldn’t have been legal, since by that point, Douglas had had two terms, and was thus (presumably) ineligible for the vice-presidency. Which doesn’t matter, since the documentary ends with them announcing their (first) joint candidacy, without even saying whether they won.
What happens if they go into witness protection and get a new legal name and SS#?
Write us a documentary and tell us the answer.
Which past vice presidents were appointed rather than elected?
Nelson Rockefeller was the only one, after Gerald Ford ascended to the presidency when Nixon resigned.
Wasn’t Ford himself appointed? He was never elected VP or President.
Yes. But why didn’t Lyndon Johnson appoint a vice president when he bacame president on Kennedy’s death? He had more than a year to go, so it would have been plety of time to do it, unless there was some constitutional problem.
Ford was appointed to the Vice Presidency as well.
Shoot. Right.
The 25th amendment was not ratified until 1965, so Johnson couldn’t appoint a vice president.
Quick correction: You are ineligible to become vice president if you ineligible to HOLD the office of President, not be elected to it.
“But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.” COTUS, 12th amendment
A literalist would say that Bill Clinton is only barred from being elected to the office of President, not holding the office, so that he could legally be elected VP and succeed to the Presidency if needed.
/sorry for the hijack, back to our reguarly scheduled thread…
A literalist would also argue that a person who is ineligible to be elected President is also ineligible to be President.
If I ever become President, I’ll have the Veep killed and appoint a 12 year-old Brazilian in his place, just for the heck of it.
Nah, he wouldn’t be eligible to take the office of the Presidency. The argument that might allow Slick Willy into the office of the Veep hinges on the fact that the 22nd Amendment deals with eligibility to be elected, rather than eligibility to be President. The Second Article is pretty clear on both the qualifications of being President (35, Natural Born, 14 year-Citizen), and the fact that you must meet those to be Veep.
There indeed was a constitutional problem. That problem was that the 25th ammendment, which provides for appointing VPs in the case of vacancies, was not passed until February 1967, after the beginning of his second term. At that point, there was no vacancy in the VP office – Hubert Humphrey was filling that position.
Also, I can think of at least one more reason Nixon is disqualified for running for president again.