No, because people ineligible to the Presidency are explicitly not allowed to be Vice President, but they are allowed to hold those other offices (in which case the succession just skips over them). For instance, foreign-born Madeleine Albright was ineligible to be President, but she was still allowed to be Secretary of State.
I think the point of the 22nd Amendment was simple - there was an unwritten rule, established by Washington, that the president should limit himself to two terms. When Roosevelt broke that rule -times two - those he upset decided to make it a written rule.
It probably didn’t occur to them that someone having been president would run as VP, not because they didn’t think of it, but becuae the unwritten rules that American politics runs by is that candidates don’t play those games. The people who want to be president don’t run just to hand it over. (Can you imagine that campaign? “You want to vote for a guy that doesn’t want the job?!”) If people started playing those games, then politics as they know it s dead.
Besides, I don’t think Hoover was on their radar. Hoover was over 70 years old at the time, way too old to run for president. ( 
)
As an aside, Washington runs on a lot of unwritten rules. It seems that in the last few years, many have been stretched and broken (i.e. Supreme Court nomination procedures, electoral college counts). As these rules become more fragile, they will likely attract the attention to make them mandatory rules (or at least court preceents). The 22nd Amendent needed to be a constitutional amendment because basic eligibility is spelled out in the constitution and so that was the only way to alter it.
The “unwritten rule” is somewhat overblown. There had only been 7 two-term presidents prior to FDR, and 2 of them did seek a third term (Grant and Theodore Roosevelt) but simply lost - Grant actively campaigned for the Republican nomination in 1880 and came about as close to getting it as you can without doing so. Teddy came in second in the election in 1912 and, had he managed to run on a unified Republican ticket instead of splitting the Progressives out from the main party, almost certainly would have won.
The other 5 two-term presidents went into retirement after their time in office, with 3 of them in such poor physical condition that serving again was out of the question.
People who opposed Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and FDR politically in the first place tried to argue for a “no third term” norm, but many people had no real issue with it. The support for the amendment in the 40s was a combination of Republicans acting on a political opportunity and the unprecedented growth in government power under FDR. No one was going to accuse Washington of being a burgeoning dictator-for-life, but FDR running four times while also centralizing the economy and exercising wartime powers made people much more nervous.
Well, Teddy Roosevelt didn’t quite serve two terms, since he succeeded to the Presidency on McKinley’s death. Though that was less than a year into his term.
Hmm, I count 10 - Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Lincoln (elected twice), Grant, Cleveland(oddity), Teddy Roosevelt (OK, elected once), Coolidge (1-1/2, and elected once).
Interestingly, 5 of the first 7 were 2-term, which probably created the perception of the 2-term limit following Washington’s example. I assume if someone had succeeded in getting 3 terms or more, the rule would have been proposed before that. But basically, it’s an unwritten rule until someone sees a need to write it down. Archie Bunker’s line, when Meathead says “you elected Roosevelt” was to say “Yeah, but we didn’t know he was going to hold onto the job like a pope!”
I suppose it’s similar to how the rules for voting became more formal as time went on, or the process for selecting senators. Among other things, we’ve recently had a court ruling affirming the states’ right to replace wayward electors. It used to be tolerated, but now when each vote could be critical, it matters.
I believe that referred to married couples. If unmarried the citizenship is that of the mother. Add to that that Obama’s mother may not have been legal in the US since it was a bigamous marriage of his father and the issue is not as clear cut as one might think.
Did you mean “Obama’s mother’s marriage may not have…”
McCain’s case is weird, too. He was a citizen by virtue of the circumstances of his birth, but by the laws in place at the time, he was not a citizen at the time of his birth. The laws at the time, of course, had provision for babies born in US territory, and also had provisions for babies born outside of the jurisdiction of the US, but neither of those applied to McCain: He was born at a military base in Panama, and hence was not in the territory of the US, but was within the jurisdiction of the US.
The law was changed a few years after his birth to close this loophole.
yep. Her marriage
If you’re responding directly to @Falchion’s statement that "Obama was a US citizen at birth because (but only because) he was born ‘in the United States’” this is either irrelevant or flatly wrong. Birthright citizen comes from the child’s being born in the U.S. regardless of the parents’ citizenship.
No, it was in reference to
It does raise an interesting question. Section 1401 doesn’t actually talk about married couples, but it necessarily assumes that information regarding both parents is available. Section 1409 talks about children born out of wedlock and has a more permissive rule for U.S. citizen mothers. As I read 1409(c), if Obama had been born (outside the United States and) out of wedlock, he would have gained the nationality of his mother.
But wait, in 2017 the Supreme Court (Ginsburg for a unanimous Court) struck down the sex-discriminatory regime in 1409(c) and concluded that the longer residency provisions of 1401 should apply to both children of US Citizen fathers and mothers. (Another interesting scenario if we had already elected our illegitimately-born, now non-natural born citizen, Obama as president).
Of course, Obama’s parents purported to marry six months prior to his birth – making him legitimate at birth (and clearly subject to 1401). You raise the question of whether or not this was a lawful marriage under Hawaiian law at the time. That’s a good point, I don’t know how that works. Traditionally, children born of a void or voidable marriage are deemed legitimate under the law; even though that would result in a detriment to the child in this case. I don’t know if there’s any law on this. (Of course, in our hypothetical where Obama was not born in Hawaii, we’d need to know how the jurisdiction of his birth restricted marriages).
OK. I wish you had quoted that part to make it clearer; readers normally assume that a post refers directly to the words that are quoted in it.