I don’t know, don’t think it is clear cut. Obviously they weren’t considering presidents formerly considered dead, but I don’t know if they intended to exclude Hoover in particular. There is fuzzy language in the constitution perhaps unintentionally or unintentionally, and determining intent isn’t ever easy. The Hoover case could have actually arisen and the many of those who wrote the amendment and voted for it would have been alive if it had, so if asked they’d probably say it wasn’t their intent. But this is a case where the rest of the law isn’t that fuzzy. Taken altogether succession to the presidency isn’t ruled out. Nowhere is the great harm caused by a former president succeeding to the office spelled out. As a matter of fact the basis of the amendment was simply to limit people’s democratic rights to vote for the person of their choice. There would be no reason for the SCOTUS to block the circumstances or the succession of a former president based on the 22nd amendment because it doesn’t exclude or provide a reason why it should be.
It just struck me that if the two-years-and two-terms limit only applies to being elected to the Presidency, someone could pull a Putin:
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X serves as President elected in his own right for eight years, then
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X’s hand-picked flunky Y is elected with X as Vice-President (and X’s party and followers knowing what the plan is: “A vote for Y is a vote for X, wink, wink!”) but Y resigns after just over two years, then
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X serves as President for the balance of Y’s term, then
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X’s hand-picked flunky Y (or Z if Y’s getting too big for his britches) runs with X as Vice-President but resigns after just over two years, then…
Appoint X as Y’s Secretary of State or Defense or Attorney General (to go after the Party’s enemies, natch) during his 728-day chunks out of the de jure Presidency, and Czar Vlad’s your uncle!
Following up on my previous reply, I think the framers and supporters of the 22nd amendment might say they might have said they did or did not intend to exclude Hoover from the presidency, but they might not be entirely honest considering their motives for creating the amendment in the first place. I think the reality is their intent was to pass something that would not allow another president with that level of popularity to serve more than two and half full terms.
More into opinion than anything factual, I doubt they were thinking about a Trump like populist that had been the reason for creating the electoral college mess in the first place. I think the assumption had been that you voted for the president that you counted on to name a qualified VP to run the country in the event of their death. I don’t think anybody cared about the level of detail created by the 22nd or the lack of clarity in the original constitution on the matter of VP succession.
Why wait two years?
President Richard M. Taytor serves two terms. Then for the 3rd term, runs as VP to Lackey#1. Immediately upon election, Lackey resigns, and Taytor has four full years. Rinse and repeat.
You’re right! If X is never again being elected in his own right (which he can’t anyway if he started with two elected terms) but always as a flunky’s VP, he doesn’t need the two-year waits.
Nope
But 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.
Which also means that had the amendment not been ratified by the states until after noon on January 20, 1961 then Eisenhower would have been ineligible to run again as well.
I don’t think any arguments bringing in Hoover would be applicable. He was only a one-term President, so even under the 22nd Amendment, he could still have run for another term.
Yes, which is exactly why that interpretation of the 22nd Amendment would be laughed out of existence - or considered a coup - if anyone tried to apply it.
If we are going to play word games and technicalities, then let us consider the actual meaning of ‘election’
An election is a process by which a choice is made.
One form of election is a General Election, in which the American people vote for the Electoral College, and the Electoral College votes for President.
Another form of election is the line of succession. That is a process of selecting a President and fits the definition of ‘election’ in the dictionary.
The Constitution only says ‘elected’, it doesn’t specify a General Election.
Suppose someone wanted to challenge George Washington as a VP candidate to the supreme court. They might argue strict construction, or maybe original intent, or anything else. What would they say is the reason the SCOTUS must decide this matter. What harms comes to the nation by allowing Washington, or maybe more realistically Barack Obama to be on the ballot as the Vice President along with a President that otherwise meets constitutional requirements?
Does it matter at all while the POTUS is alive? Would the VP’s ability to break ties in the Senate and check on the president’s health daily be somehow compromised because he doesn’t qualify to be president? The SCOTUS might say he’d be ineligible to become president but there’s a line of succession and the former president who had already served two terms could be skipped over. On top of that they may rule that a 2 term POTUS serving as VPOTUS could still succeed to the presidency because the constitution doesn’t clearly exclude it.
What would be the reason the SCOTUS would have to address this matter at all? And what would be the harm in allowing this type of succession which conforms to the will of the people as expressed through voting?
Presidents can die at any moment. Aside from all the other issues, doesn’t having the first person in the line of succession be liable to utter uncertainty about their ability to qualify for the job result in the worst possible scenario at a moment of crisis?
I think we’re losing the train of thought, here. There are two different things that are unusual about the 22nd Amendment. The first is that it only exempts the then-current officeholder from its restrictions, not the current and all previous. Grandfather clauses are more often structured the latter way, so this was probably a deliberate decision, because Hoover (the only other person this could possibly matter for) was quite unpopular. But whether this was intentional or not, it doesn’t matter, because Hoover is now long dead.
The second oddity about the 22nd Amendment is that, by the wording of the text, it only applies to being elected President, not to becoming President by any other means. This is still relevant, because any former president, at any time, could argue that they’re eligible to become Vice President. And this oddity of the wording almost certainly was not intended, as would have been clear if anyone had pointed it out and asked about it before the amendment was passed.
The same as the harm that would come by allowing such a person to run for President directly, of course. Which Congress and the States decided was a sufficient risk of harm that they passed an amendment against it.
What? Of course they were thinking about a dangerous populist. That’s why they passed the amendment in the first place, because we had just had a very successful and far-reaching populist win four elections in a row, and they were afraid of it happening again.
The voters have decided at election time that the VP is qualified. We are talking about a case where the VP’s ability be the executive has already been tested. The sudden death of a president would not be as much of an issue knowing that a proven executive takes over. Any complaints about his constitutional qualifications can be worked out in the court if necessary and then the next person in line can assume the job if the person is ruled ineligible. It would be better if the SCOTUS cleared this up and said that the 22nd doesn’t exclude succession because it only address elected presidents.
I will get back to the rest later. You are correct. I intended to write an “FDR like populist”. A Trump was in their minds.
SCOTUS can’t preemptively clear up anything. It can only respond to actual cases based on actual events. Our world is psychotic today, but even so the likelihood of a real test case involving a real former president really running on a major party ticket as Vice President is tinier than the dot over this i.
Exactly. If someone tries challenges it they won’t hear it because there’s no reason to decide. And the result is a that succession would not be in question.
They won’t hear it in your version of a hypothetical. It would never get that far because everybody knows it’s ridiculous in my version of the hypothetical. That’s the problem with hypotheticals.
Well my hypothetical is going to make your hypothetical look like… oh never mind, you’re right, there’s no end to it.
Worse, none of these hypotheticals ever happen in reality so nobody ever gets a chance to say “I told you so.”
Oh, and of course, if Washington himself were still alive, the 22nd Amendment probably wouldn’t have passed, at least in a form that would exclude him. But then, if Washington were still alive, that’d probably change everything about our political landscape. My guess is that he eventually would have been roped into becoming King.