A quick comment on the twenty second amendment
Published Tue, Sep 9 2008 2:59 PM
Technorati Tags: Constitution
The Seattle Times has an interesting article today in their Nation & World section on the role of the Vice Presidency. The article was originally published in the Washington Post by Joel Achenbach. As I was reading it, this jumped out at me…
[T]here is an active academic debate over whether the Constitution bars someone like Bill Clinton — now ineligible for the presidency — from being elected vice president.
I find the assertion in this bit (that Bill Clinton is ineligible for the presidency) to be incorrect. Of course the Constitution does not bar someone like Bill Clinton — who was elected to two terms as President — from being elected Vice President.
The amendment that apparently raises the question is the twenty-second amendment. That amendment reads…
AMENDMENT XXII
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 President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by 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.
Read it carefully. Nowhere in the text of the amendment does it say anything at all about the Vice Presidency. It specifically talks about election to the office of President. It does not prohibit ascension to the office in the event of the death or incapacity of the currently elected President. It does not say that no person who has held the office of president more for more than a term and a half is not eligible to that office either.
If that's the interpretation we must take, then Bill Clinton would not be eligible to become Speaker of the House of Representatives (if he should run and be elected as a Representative), or the President pro tempore of the Senate (if he should run and be elected as a Senator), or if Congress should choose some other method of succession in the case of the death or incapacity of both the President and Vice President, from the line of succession.
The statement in the article that Bill Clinton is ineligible for the Presidency seems to me to be wrong. The twenty-second amendment doesn't make him ineligible to hold the office, just ineligible to be elected to the office.
I can't for the life of me figure out why there should be an active academic debate over this, except that academicians obviously can't understand the plain meaning of words. Either that or they simply can't read.
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David responded with:
 | Of the options you offered, based on
1. Eight+ years of university and grad/post grad school
2. Continuing exposure to academia through long time networking w/ friends, colleagues and professional aquaintences, work with college students in various venues, my wife's ongoing contacts, many family members who are a part of (or who have escaped being a part of by finding truly gainful employment or retiring) academia persuade me that
"...academicians obviously can't understand the plain meaning of words" is the most likely.
Frankly, the combination of academese (a particularly odious form of doublespeak), postmodern deconstructivism, and the effect of being insulated from real world consequences of their silly behavior all conspire to make many academia nut fruitcakes completely unable to understand the plain meaning of words. |
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