Ok, so, George W. decides, hey, I haven’t done everything I wanted to do while I was in office; i’m going to change the constitution so I can run for a third term (and any after that, if i’m still needed). Say he manages to pull this off; the changing of the constitution is agreed by Congress and passed into law. What would happen? What would the people of the USA do, and what would other countries have to say about this?
The constitution cannot be changed by a law of Congress.
First, both houses of Congress have to pass the proposed amendment by a 2/3 vote. That’s impossible unless some Democrats go along.
Second, 3/4 of the state legislatures have to approve it. Again, that’s impossible unless some Democrats go along.
If it did pass, and was written so as not to exclude the current president (as the one (25th?) instituting the term limit was written), well then, the American people would get to vote whether to reelect him or not. Other countries wouldn’t have any say in it; why should they?
The procedure for changing the Constitution is in Article V. Congress by 2/3 majority proposes an amendment. Or 2/3 of the several states can call for a convention to propose amendments. The amendment(s) are then submitted to the states and if 3/4ths of them ratify the amendment(s) they become part of the constitution. So if Bush could get such an amendment that applied to him through he could run again, and again. (I’m scaring myself silly).
However, such an amendment might be hard to get ratified unless it excluded the president in office when it was submitted for ratification.
In order to make this a reality an amendment would need to be passed by 2/3’s of each house as well as passed by 3/4 of the states, all this before 2008. To do this Bush would need to be far more popular amonst Dems in congress and blue states then he currently is.
So in answer to your question, I’d say that the people of the US would be pleased with this development, since Bush would need to be enormously popular to pull this off in the first place.
Apologies; i’m not as well versed in American policital red tape as I should be. What I mean is…suppose Bush, though legal means, was allowed to run for a third term in office. Why should other countries have a say in it? They shouldn’t; but I imagine they’d have an opinion, be it “Hey, if it’s legal, that’s fine” to “That’s undemocratic” to “I like the guy, but he shouldn’t be allowed to keep running for office”.
Bush get it passed now, excluding himself, a different candidate wins the job for four years, and the Bush can come back again.
First, let’s be clear that the probability of such an amendment passing* is so low that it might as well be zero. But, if we assume that somehow it did pass…
My first thought is that he’d almost certainly lose. But then, I wouldn’t put it past the Democrats to run yet another weak candidate, and fumble again. 
In short, he would probably lose, but it does depend on whom he was running against, to some degree.
The rest of the world would piss and moan just like they did last time, and most Americans wouldn’t give a damn. There would be threads started in this forum that the end of the world is near, and that America would never survive another Bush term (just like last time).
*remember, it has to pass in 3/4 of the state legislatures, too, not just in Congress. Besides, any such amendment would be written so as not to affect the sitting president-- ie, it would take effect after he left office. He might be able to run again in subsequent elections, but not in the one immediately after his 2nd term.
A tactical problem for Bush would be that such an amendment, if it simply repealed the 22nd Amendment, would also free Bill Clinton to run again, if he felt up to it. Bush certainly wouldn’t have defeated Clinton in 2000, and might be hard put to do it today.
But the 22nd Amendment only says no one shall be “elected” president more than twice. If Bush really wants a third term, he might have better luck arguing he wasn’t really “elected” in 2000, since he narrowly lost the popular vote, and therefore the 22nd Amendment doesn’t apply to him. It would possibly invalidate everything he did during his first term (since he would be claiming he wasn’t really lawfully President then), and it would be incredibly shameless. But chaos and shamelessness haven’t fazed him before, so why balk now?
That’s risky; the nation might decide they like Hillary Clinton.
Hey, if it gets passed in time for 2008, we could have Bush vs. Clinton. And I’m not talking about Hillary.
Then maybe she gets to run for three, four, etc terms. Same thing applies; Is there an uproar? As the American public have voted for her, do people just think “Hey, i’m all for democracy, but I like the way she’s done things, i’m happy to have her again”? Or would it be a case of “No matter how much I agree with her policies, running for a third term is unconstitutional”
I brought this up with Bush in the first place not just because he’s the current incumbent but also because the Republican party seems very keen to stick to the traditional constitutional rights. This would go very much against those (correct me if i’m wrong, but wasn’t the idea in the first place to not have a “monarch”?), but hey, they’d be in power for another four years at least.
Don’t be hasty, John, we haven’t survived this one yet. 
But if a constitutional amendment were passed, it would be a “traditional constitutional right”, just a new tradition. Republicans arene’t averse to amending the constitution. In fact, I think they are more prone to do so than the Democrats. But that might be because the Democrats can count on the SCOTUS to amend the constitution for them.
Who says? They can write Amendments any way they choose. If the Congress and enough states decided, they could make the presidency an inherited position similar to a monarchy and specify that Bush is America’s King George I. It will never happen, but I would wager that at least 10% of the electorate would go along with it.
This is always my response to this question. Repeal the 22nd amendment and the ‘Bill 2008’ campaign start could be timed with an atomic clock.
And at that point I’m lusting for the Bill Clinton vs George W Bush debates. Hell, Bush had trouble against Kerry…what Bill Clinton would do to him would be worth 5 years in stir if you did it to a dog.
Say what you want about Bill Clinton, God knows he has his faults. But on the campaign trail (which appears to be his native habitat) he is unmatched. If he speaks to you from the other side of Dodger Stadium you believe that he’s speaking directly to you and you alone.
I should have said “probably”. My fault. I think people would be very suspicious of voting for an amendment that would so favor the sitting president. He’d have to be REALLY popular for that.
True. I don’t think any president in history was popular enough to inspire such an amendment.
Canada here I come.
Err…No.
Bush was in fact “elected” president. The fact that he did not win a plurality of the popular vote on November 7, 2000 is immaterial. The Electoral College “elects” the President, and they elected George W. Bush on January 6, 2001.
There is nothing undemocratic about how many times Bush runs as long as it’s within the US’ democratic process. He should be able to run as often as law allows him to. Those opinions you came up with is what is undemocratic.
This is why I think the voting system is flawed.