Quote:
Originally Posted by Gemini Cricket
The best news of all is that Bush II can never, ever be president again. Never ever.
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This made me finally delve into whether Bill Clinton could Constitutionally be VP.
The answer is...slightly cloudy. It all depends on a semantic interpretation.
There are 3 rules in the Constitution that it all hinges on.
Article
II says, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be
eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be
eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."
12th Amendment says "But no person constitutionally
ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States."
22nd Amendment says "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."
So the answer depends on whether "shall not be elected" is equivalent to "is eligible". One interpretation says that it's not. That only Article II deals with
eligibility, so as long as he meets those requirements and is not
elected to the Presidency, he (or Dubya) can be VP and thus potentially President.
However if you take a less semantically literate view that the 22nd Amendment does constitute a condition for ineligibility, then clearly he would not be allowed to be VP.
While part of me would be amused at the acceptance of the pedantic, semantic reading, I can't imagine any Supreme Court buying it.