my friend wants to know
“No person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”
-12th Amendment
The basic problem is the 12th amendment which says … well let me look it up…
“…no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice President of the United States.”
But I’ve heard it argued that this is an open question. I eagerly await the scholarly answer to this question.
The 22nd Amendment says that “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice,” but it doesn’t actually say that a person can’t become Preisdent in some other way. To some, this creates an open question, but it has never been tested.
This was actually asked of Bill Clinton, and his opinion was no. Although the 22nd amendment doesn’t state so outright, his legal opinion was that you can’t be vice president if you are ineligible to be president.
often discussed before
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=33709
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=32574
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=13240
But as was said above, Clinton is not ineligible to BE President, just to be ELECTED President. Some may think it is a distinction without a difference, but many men in the past have been President without being elected President (Ford, Truman, Johnson)
My understanding is that that particular language was chosen to allow someone who had succeeded to the Presidency (after, say, a President’s death) to run for the office in his or her own right two times. For example, Harry Truman, who succeeded to he Presidency upon FDR’s death and won reelection in 1948, could permissibly have been elected again in 1952 if he had chosen to run and won. This means that the maximum length of a President’s service set by the 22d Amendment is 2 full terms plus 1 partial term.
The argument for allowing Bill Clinton to run for VP in 2012 is that if Obama died in office, Clinton would only then be serving the 1 partial term that the 22d Amendment would clearly have permitted to Harry Truman. In other words, the argument is that it should not make a constitutional difference that that partial term would come after Clinton’s two full terms instead of before it.
And Ford was never even elected vice-president: the only man to be President of the US without ever having been elected either president or vice-president.
Well, there was that thing in 2000.
Truman would not have been eligible to run again in 1952 had the 22nd Amendment applied to him, since he had served well more than 2 years of FDR’s term. However, the 22nd Amendment didn’t apply to him.
Except that were Clinton to serve as Obama’s VP, it would be possible for him to serve more than 2 years of Obama’s term, plus his two full terms to which he was elected.
That said, I think a really strict reading of the 12th and 22nd amendments would make it legal for Clinton to serve as VP, and then as President in the case of Obama’s death or incapacitation, since he [Clinton] is eligible to serve, just not to be elected, under the 22nd, and therefore is not disqualified under the 12th.
No, regardless of that thing in 2000, GWB was clearly elected president in 2004. Or do the libs dispute that one as well?
2004 would be immaterial to how Bush became President the first time.
There’s no need to use that language to say that, since the amendment discusses it explicitly:
IOW, if you served less than two years of someone else’s term, you can be elected as president twice.
Nonetheless, the description of Ford was “the only man to be President of the US without ever having been elected either president or vice-president.”
That would not apply to Bush after he won the 2004 election, even allowing for liberal delusions re. 2000.
It would have applied to him for his first term, and 2004 would not have changed that. Bush was arguably still the 2nd person to become President without having been elected to either the Presidency or the vice-presidency, regardless of what happened in 2004.
Point being that this statement was [arguably] true for four years.
Once the election is finished in the Electoral College that is it, everything’s over but the hand wringing once that happens. A President is considered elected when the electoral college casts its votes, so Bush was definitively elected both times. Ford, having never been elected President in the EC, and never elected Vice President in the EC can honestly be said to have never been elected to any executive branch office.
We all know all the noise about Election 2000, but from a strict statutory/constitutional viewpoint the only election that matters happens in the EC, once that election is finished any improprieties or miscounts that happened are only important in the historical record or as talking points–it doesn’t affect the fact of someone’s being elected or not.
The electoral college voted Bush as President in 2000, therefore he was elected President.
Done!
Not really, because if we were trying to install a President for life in Clinton, Obama could resign at 12:10pm on January 20, 2013 and allow Clinton to serve the remainder of his term. Then Joe Biden Jr. could run in 2016 with Clinton as his VP. Then he could resign at 12:10 pm on January 20, 2017 allowing Clinton to serve the remainder. Rinse and repeat.