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Amendment XXII of the Constitution
Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. 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.Section 2. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress. [Emphasis mine]
If you read this carefully, this leaves open one other avenue to an Obama/Clinton ticket. By my reading, there's nothing preventing Bill Clinton from being the VP. I'm not seriously advocating it, but from a legal point-of-view, this is correct, right?
(Note: a Clinton/Clinton ticket isn't completely ruled out, either. However, that they're both from the same state makes it more challenging since the electoral college from NY couldn't vote for both of them. See Amendment XII for more details.)
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Comments (11)
I checked this out earlier and while you're correct in that there is nothing the the 22nd amendment that would preclude Bill Clinton from being elected Vice President and it might be possible to overcome the Article II, Sec. 1, requirement that the VP be a resident of a different state than the President, there is another provision that has to be considered:
In Amendment XII (which changed from having the highest vote-getter the President and the next-highest the VP to separate elections for Pres and for VP), there is this statement: "no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States."
The most logical reading of this restriction would be that if a person (say, Bill Clinton) would be constitutionally ineligible to be elected to the office of President (per Amendment XXII), then he is not eligible to be VP either.
So I *think* we're safe from the prospect of a Bill Clinton Vice Presidency. (Can you **imagine** him as VP??)
April 1, 2008 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's why I stressed the word "elected" above (although I see I didn't do it very well). By my reading, he's eligible to be President—he's just not eligible to be elected president. Perhaps I'm splitting hairs and I need to re-read that essay on why laws are not like software.
April 1, 2008 3:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Minor quibble on Amendment XII: it never says the president and VP must come from different states. It does say that electors from a state may not vote for two residents of their own state. So Texas electors can't vote for two Texans, or New York electors can't vote for two New Yorkers. Electors may vote for two people from the same state, so long as it's not their own state.
Given how close presidential elections have been recently, neither major party would likely try to run such a ticket. But it actually might not be as hard as it seems, even if two Californians were running together. If the state's electors are given free choice on the VP candidate (presuming they must honor the state's popular vote for president), then they could simply vote for another non-serious candidate. So long as their won by enough electoral votes, it wouldn't be an issue. But if no VP candidate got a majority of electoral votes (the likely outcome, since electors wouldn't vote for the VP candidate of the other party), then the newly elected Senate would choose the VP.
April 1, 2008 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
For anyone who likes the idea of Bill Clinton as VP, I should point out that such a loophole, if it exists, would also apply to Bush. McCain/Bush '08! :P
April 1, 2008 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think that the 22d Amendment, reasonably read, prohibits Bill Clinton from becoming the Vice-President. If your reading were right, he could just keep becoming Vice-President, using his superpower of dominion over the American public, his "President" could keep stepping aside, and, voila, our first (well, second if you count FDR), President for life. But then, I'm a lawyer, I have little experience with coups and juntas. A coup or junta would be the only thing that could enliven our politics more than Bush v. Gore.
The 22d Amendment is actually a powerful and improperly neglected argument against Hillary. Frigging website ate my essay on this, so I won't retype it until I get really, really, really bored.
April 1, 2008 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's too bad. It sounds interesting.
April 1, 2008 11:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
The text also allows a Clinton(H)/Clinton(B) ticket, if you're really twisted.
April 1, 2008 3:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that Amd. XXII with it's word "elected" would not prevent him from serving as President if he were Vice President ... but arguably Amd. XII would keep him from holding position of Vice President in the first place. Awkward wording: does it mean
#1 "no person constitutionally ineligible to [[be elected to]] the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States."
-- or --
#2 "no person constitutionally ineligible to [[serve in]] the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States."
#1 would clearly bar all former 2 term presidents, since they are ineligible from being elected president. #2 is fuzzier, since Amd XXII only prohibits election to, not service in.
I REALLY hope articleman finds (or retypes) his argument because I'm wracking my brains. Best I can come up with is saying that the prohibition against a person "who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President" would preclude her because, although Bill was elected President for two terms, Hillary -- we are now told -- actually **acted** as president during those terms. Close?
April 1, 2008 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Eligible" is from the same Latin root as "elect." Which is why Amendment XII doesn't bother to spell out "eligible to be elected to the office . . ." It doesn't have to; the simple word "eligible" suffices.
So no, Bill is barred from running for VP.
April 1, 2008 4:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Elizabeth2, you've nailed it on the head in your prior comment. No need for a lawyer to explain it further.
April 1, 2008 4:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Er, I am a lawyer...... ... probably why I could come up with such an off-beat idea, right?
April 1, 2008 4:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
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