Let’s pretend somehow George Washington born in 1732 in the Virginia Colony never died of old age and decided to run for President today.
Could he actually run for President today or would being born in a British territory with two British parents disqualify him?
Yes, a 291 year old would be eligible as he was born in a location that became part of the USA though not then the USA.
Trying to find the exact wording for eligibility.
Legal requirements for presidential candidates have remained the same since the year Washington accepted the presidency. As directed by the Constitution, a presidential candidate must be a natural born citizen of the United States, a resident for 14 years, and 35 years of age or older.
My phrasing is not right above, but Washington would not be disqualified for location of birth, he would be disqualified as he served 2 terms already.
Covered in Article II: he was a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, right?
They had to make a rule like that, since otherwise no one would be eligible to be President for the first election. Or for several elections thereafter.
He has already been POTUS twice. Under current rules, a person can only be President for a caretaker term < 2 years, plus two times elected in his own right.
So, no. He couldn’t be elected again.
22nd seems to be the real problem.
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The 22nd does have a grandfather clause, but as written, it only applies to the President at the time of its ratification (i.e., Truman), not any other previous President. So, yes, that would disqualify Washington.
Guess he’ll just have to be vice-president first…
That would force a test case if he had to assume the Presidency for more than 2 years.
Technically you have to go all the way to Martin Van Buren to get a President who was actually a citizen of the U.S. when he was born.
He couldn’t be Veep either. There’s a clause saying that anyone ineligible to be President is also ineligible to be Vice-President.
Considering that only 10 of the 13 extant states even sent electors, and just generally, the first election of Washington was so different from what elections have been since the 22nd was ratified, there’s probably an argument he was appointed, and would be eligible for a second elected term.
Well, that’s what actually happened. But there were American-born 35 year-olds by the 1812 election (1776+35 = 1811), which was Madison’s second election.
Wouldn’t you say that being “elected” for the purposes of the 22nd amendment means by the electoral college, because that’s the body that chooses the president under the constitution, independently of how the electors were chosen? Appointment rather than popular election of electors was, to my knowledge, widespread until well into the 19th century, and would still be permissible because the constitution leaves the mechanism for choosing electors to state legislation.
Does it? I think that Truman might have been the only previously elected President at the time 22nd was adopted who was still an active politician, oddly enough, but in theory was Herbert Hoover eligible to run for re-election in 1952 and then to keep running as many times as he wanted?
We had an absence of previously elected presidents in the late 1940s. Only Truman and Hoover, I think. FDR was dead, of course, and Coolidge, Harding, Wilson, Taft, and Teddy too.
Hmmmm. The wording of the amendment does seem to exclude Hoover from eligibility:
“…this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.”
Seems almost specifically to exclude Hoover personally, in fact.
As I read this wording, it states that the entire amendment does not apply to the president at the time of the proposal of the amendment by Congress. It also leaves the president at the time the amendment entered into force with the possibility to finish that term. The amendment was proposed in 1947 and entered into force in 1951, so both of these exceptions apply to Truman (and even for him, the second exception is meaningless because he benefits from the wider first one). Which would mean that Truman is the only person exempted from the term limits, and free to run (and be elected) as many times as he likes.
This leaves the possibility of a time-traveling foreign-born citizen going back to 1788, getting naturalised by a state prior to the adoption of the constitution, coming back to the present, and running for president despite not having US citizenship by birth.
Oh, not this again.
There are two avenues by which one can become President: by election, and by succession. The 22nd Amendment only addresses election. It places no new limits on who can succeed to the office of the Presidency through succession.
So all the people who were eligible to the office of the Presidency prior to the ratification of the 22nd Amendment are still eligible. They’re just ineligible to reach that office by election.
So the 12th Amendment has nothing new to say here. If it had said that “no person constitutionally ineligible to be elected to the office of President” could be VP, that would have been a different story. But it doesn’t.
Terminator 1776: He Said He’d Be Back