Vice Prez Clinton

[beagledave]

follow up on several threads

http://politics.slate.msn.com/code/PressBox/PressBox.asp?Show=9/7/2000&idMessage=6013

[BobT]

Dammit, Gore should have just chosen Clinton to put him on the ticket and we all could have gotten an answer to this question!

Now we have to wait until at least 2004.

[spazo]

Don’t even joke about that,scares me
to death just thinking about it.

[dtilque]

Come on, people! Only the most hardcore Clinton supporters (a very small group, to be sure) would support a Clinton candidacy for VP. The rest of the Democrats can recognize political suicide when they see it.

[BobT]

I don’t care about the politics. I just want someone to settle this answer once and for all, so people will stop posting the question!

[Sapphire_Bullet]

according to the 12th Amendment:
“no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be ineligible to that of Vice President of the United States.”

so, relax- there will never be a Vice President William Jefferson Clinton

thank God for small favors
smarty

[Northern_Piper]

I have a great deal of respect for the academics cited in the linked article, particulary Professor Amar, who taught me about federal court jurisdiction. However, there is at least one obvious error in the article, which says:

If both the presidency and the vice presidency were vacated and Bill Clinton were the speaker of the House, he would become president under the 1948 presidential succession act. (Next in line, the president pro tempore of the Senate and then the cabinet officers in the order specified by the act.)

The relevant provision is:

Sec. 19. Vacancy in offices of both President and Vice President; officers eligible to act

(a)(1) If, by reason of death, resignation, removal from office, inability, or failure to qualify, there is neither a President nor Vice President to discharge the powers and duties of the office of President, then the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall, upon his resignation as Speaker and as Representative in Congress, act as President.

(e) Subsections (a), (b), and (d) of this section shall apply only to such officers as are eligible to the office of President under the Constitution.

In other words, the statute governing presidential succession does not answer the issue of eligibility to be President, which is governed by the US Constitution. To succeed under the the statute, a office-holder such as the Speaker of the House must be eligible to be President under the terms of the Constitution. So, referring to the statute, as the linked article does, is not an answer to the basic question, which has to be resolved by reference to Article II, the 12th Amendment, and the 22nd Amendment.