Can a president who has served 2 terms become the vice president if he or she is choosen by the democratic runner who is running for the presidency?
I don’t see why not. Of course, he could not become president again if something happened to Hillary, but rather the next person in line would jump over him. Yes?
But since the vice president is largely just a president-in-waiting, I’m not sure the voters would put up with something like that. But then it’s Bill Clinton, so maybe they would.
12th Amendment says no quite unambiguously, unless you want to torture the word “eligible” beyond all human decency.
Right now, the only thing preventing Hillary from doing it is that she and Bill are both residents of New York- but Bill could pretty easily get an apartment of convenience back in Little Rock and pretend he’s living in Arkansas again (that’s more or less what Cheney did in 2000; he was living in Texas, but re-established nominal residence in Wyoming).
The rules say Bill can’t be elected again, but the rules DON’T clearly state that he couldn’t serve as Vice President and take over in the event of the President’s death.
But even though it’s (probably) technically within the rules, I don’t see any chance at all that Hillary would pick Bill as Veep. I think she’d feel a need to pick someone who appeals to non Clinton worshippers.
He’s not eligible to be President and thus not eligible to be Vice-President. Compared to some of the other amendments, this one is quite clear.
Not eligible to be elected president. The 22nd amendment does not disqualify him from taking it by succession. I don’t see anything that would prevent him from running for VP (or the House, and shooting for Speaker).
I thought the amendment put a cap on presidential terms, not vice-presidential ones? Remember Madeleine Albright? As secretary of state, she was pretty high up in the succession line, but not having been a native-born American, she could not have become president; the next in line after her would have. Why couldn’t it be the same for Bill? I admit it’s pretty useless having a vice president who is not eligible to be president, but technically it seems it could be done.
And COULD he succeed to the presidency? Just not be eligible to be elected again come election day?
Earlier threads that have addressed (and pretty much exhausted) this topic:
Could Bill Clinton Run As Vice President?
American President and terms in office
Could Kerry choose Clinton as a running mate
The 12th amendment says that “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.” Since former President Clinton is ineligible for reelection as president, arguably he is therefore ineligible for election as vice president. But the answer is not as clear-cut as the 12th amendment suggests. I can see three possible views:
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A twice-elected president is ineligible for the vice-presidency under any circumstances. The 22nd amendment makes him or her ineligible for election as president, so the 12th amendment makes him or her ineligible for election as vice-president. The 25th amendment, the only other route to the vice-presidency, is silent about eligibility but implicitly imports the eligibility requirements from the 12th and 22nd amendments. (To put it another way, the 22nd amendment means that being re-elected as president exhausts one’s eligibility, not only for purposes of election but for all purposes.)
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A twice-elected president is ineligible for the vice-presidency by election, but not necessarily by way of the 25th amendment. The 12th amendment’s eligibility clause does import the 22nd amendment’s limit on electability, but the 25th amendment does not involve an election, so a twice-elected former president can become vice-president if the incumbent president nominates and both houses of Congress confirm him or her.
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A twice-elected president is eligible for the vice-presidency under any circumstances. The 22nd amendment’s literal terms apply only to election as president, not to election as vice-president or to succession to the presidency.
Views 3 and 2 are more literal (that is, more textually defensible) than View 1, but Views 1 and 2 make more sense than View 3 in light of the 22nd amendment. The amendment says only that “no person shall be elected,” but surely its intent was to keep a demagogue (or any individual, for that matter) from monopolizing the executive branch indefinitely. If a twice-elected president is eligible for election as vice-president, and is then eligible for succession to the presidency, what would stop a popular term-limited president from running for vice-president on a ticket with a figurehead who will take office then immediately step aside? The constitutional gymnastics are a little more complicated, but the same policy question can arise in the case of a twice-elected president chosen as vice-president under the 25th amendment.
A statutory succession to the presidency under the Presidential Succession Act raises substantially the same issues, since the Act’s provisions “apply only to such officers as are eligible to the office of President under the Constitution.” 3 U.S.C. § 19(e). Interestingly, there was a book written about thirty years ago – Line of Succession by Brian Garfield – that deals with some of these issues. The vice-president and speaker are killed in a terrorist attack, the president-elect is kidnapped then killed, and the president pro tem is politically unacceptable to both political parties, so the defeated outgoing president schemes to amend the Succession Act so that he can stay in office. The book sidesteps the 22nd-amendment issue, though, because the outgoing president has served only one term.
Short of a constitutional amendment, I suppose that there can be no definitive answer until somebody tries it.
Why would she? The primary role of the vice president is to assume control in case the president cannot finish their term. As has been demonstrated by several previous posters, Bill simply cannot do this. So why make him VP?
If she simply wants him around for his advice and what not, well he doesn’t need to be VP for that. If she just really wants him to have a fancy title he could be secretary of state, or some other position. If she wants to use his reputation to garner votes than she need only tell the public that he will be her closest advisor.
Its fine as a theoretical question, but I just don’t see why she’d do it.
Could she choose him? Yes, I think so. Bill is not eligible to be ELECTED president, because he’s already been elected 2 terms. However, I’m pretty sure that he could still serve as president, so long as he is not directly elected to the office (The law is pretty unclear here; it’s more or less subject to interpretation.)
Would she choose him? I highly doubt it. She already gets the Bill Clinton followers; she’d do better to pick a candidate which brings her something she doesn’t have.
No, of course not - for reasons brianmelendez already outlined.
Keep in mind that the constitution was written back before modern “legalese”, explicit and all-inclusive to the point of absurdity, became the preferred style of writing for such things.
So it’s not too hard to find cases where one can say “Hey, but it doesn’t SAY that exactly!” - but please, at a mere 4543 words (sans amendments) it’s not written to that standard.
Well, of course monica would think so. 
To summarize a few points, some of which have already been made:
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Whatever the technical possibility of such a course, the constitutional questions are so severe that no sensible political party would do it. Under current political conditions, it would be a recipe for almost sure defeat at the polls. This kind of thing would be too big a risk for either party.
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Should any political party try it, it is certain that the question would come before the Supreme Court. Given the clear intent of 22nd Amendment, it is extremely unlikely that the Court would agree that it be subverted by the back door.
However, under other political conditions, it might be possible. An overwhelmingly popular president, with a large congressional majority of his party, and who had managed to pack the Supreme Court with unquestioned loyalists, might be able to have the Constitution twisted in this fashion. But under such conditions of overwhelming political support, it would be simpler just to pass an amendment to repeal presidential term limits. So even in this case I doubt that it would occur.
The law is pretty clear. A person who has served two full terms is not eligible to be President again. And nobody can be Vice President unless they are eligible to be President. Any other interpretation of the law requires an amazingly tortured redefinition of the words involved.
No.
One need not serve two full terms.
And the law says they are not eligible to be elected again upon meeting the two-term test.
That is all it says.
Anything else is speculation and conjecture.
I think that, in reality, the primary role of the VP is to bring additional voters to the ticket.
Adding Bill Clinton would hardly do that – as people have said, Clinton-lovers are already on board.
She’s more likely to choose someone from the South or Mountain West part of the country, to attract voters there. Possibly one of the current Presidential candidates might be chosen.
Probably not Obama, since he’s more northern, and most of his voters are already solid democratic votes. Might possibly bring more black voters, but blacks as a group are not a reliable bloc – way too many don’t vote.
(Also, a ticket with a woman and a black man would enrage many right-wingers – maybe they’d all drop dead of a heart attack and not be around to vote republican. But more likely, it would just increase the racist/sexist voter turnout.)
Edwards might be possible. He might attract some of the southern vote. But I don’t know if he will accept another VP run.
California & the west coast is not a likely source; a VP candidate from there won’t really add more votes where the votes are needed.
Personally, I think the most likely choice among the current Presidential candidates is Bill Richardson of NM. He attracts votes from the Rocky Mountain states, just where democrats have a chance of winning them. And he’s hispanic, and can attract the hispanic voters. Being from a border state, he has experience with the immigration issue. Plus his executive experience as Governor will be an addition to the ticket. (Gov. Bill Ritter of Colorado might also be a good VP candidate, for many of the same reasons. He would help to win Colorado for the democrats (that’s why their national Convention is in Denver).)
P.S. Bill Clinton will not be the VP candidate.
He’ll just wait around, and be appointed to fill the remainder of Hillary’s term in the Senate. That’s tradition; it’s quite common to appoint the spouse to fill the remaining term. Plus it gets Gov. Spitzer out of the problem of having to choose one of the various factions in the New York democratic party.
Words should mean things, and the 22nd amendment is poorly drafted if those framers wished to exclude a two term President from ever SERVING again, as opposed to being ELECTED.
There is a difference between the words, and I take a textualist approach here.
The 12th amendment says that no person ineligible to the office of President shall be elected Vice President.
I’m not a fan of Bill Clinton, but he is not ineligible to the office of President, but only to be elected to said office. Semantics? Ask Gerald Ford if he were still alive.
If the writers of the 22nd amendment wished that a person who served two terms be forever barred from serving as President ever again, they should have looked into their dictionaries a little deeper…
The 22nd amendment was proposed after FDR’s four terms in office. The intent was to put into law an existing custom that a president would not serve more then two terms. Cite: Cornell University Law - Annotated Constitution
Quote: “By reason of the lack of a positive expression upon the subject of the tenure of the office of President, and by reason of a well–defined custom which has risen in the past that no President should have more than two terms in that office, much discussion has resulted upon this subject. Hence it is the purpose of this . . . [proposal] . . .”
IANAL -
This certainly would be the argument used by a political faction in Colibri’s case. It doesn’t take a very broad interpretation of the 12th and 22nd Amendements to conclude that no person could become Veep who couldn’t become President, nor that the powers of the President would not devolve on anyone constitutionally ineligible to be elected to that position. The Supreme Court has created rights based on ‘penumbra emenating’ from other rights; why do you think it will ever be as strict in its interpretation as you suggest?
It’d be far more expedient to just repeal the 22nd Amendment.
That’s a possibity I could see happening.
Nah, she’s going to pick Al Gore.