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I remember back in like 2004 or so hearing people say that Bill Clinton should run as VP and whoever he runs with should just step down and let him be president. Would someone who has been elected president twice be allowed to run as VP?
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From the Twelfth Amendment:
But say that Clinton, Bush or Obama ran for the House, won, and was selected as Speaker of the House.
Supertwin team-up of Kos and Koch kill the President and Vice President... would one of those men who have served two terms become President again?
The law is unclear here, because there hasn't been such a situation. But, since Bush/Obama didn't run for that office, I do not think there is anything against it.
I agree - and it'll probably never happen. But its a fun scenario to play with.
Indeed! If you are a fan of Battlestar Galactica, you will know how interesting it can get.
Doesnt matter. 22nd amendment makes it clear that you can serve only 10 years maximum. There is a Presidential line of succession (15 seats down I might add).
The 22nd Amendment says no person can be elected in those circumstances, it does not say you can't serve more than ten years. Attaining the presidency via the line of succession is not the same as being elected to that position, so it remains unclear.
Or better yet, Obama is named Secretary of State by the next president, and then a catastrophe eliminates the President, VP, the Speaker of the House and the Senate Pro Tempore, who all live and work in Washington. Obama would be 5th in line of succession, and not have to run for anything. It would likely be decided by the Supreme Court, but the Constitution would likely support it. Further, if the four people listed here were all killed or removed from office it seems likely that this hypothetical Obama would be president, that is, he wouldn't have to choose to be or agree to be President, he could only remove himself.
Actually being a sitting member of the House isn't a requirement to become Speaker. If a political party felt that the influence was worth it they could elect them. It's unlikely but entirely possible.
That person would not be elected, though. Elected to an office, but not as president.
Honestly, no, I believe they'd be skipped if something like that ever happened or there would be some kind of congressional vote to appoint someone from the house/senate.
Ex presidents are referred to as "Mr. President," and you can't serve in two branches.
This has no basis in the law or Constitution. Former President William Howard Taft served as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1921 to 1930.
You can't serve in two branches at the same time, not the same thing.
I don't think there is anything preventing a President from running for the legislature. Many have in the past.
William Taft was appointed to the Supreme Court after leaving the office of the president
I am not an expert, but if I remember correctly LBJ was able to run for reelection in 1968 because he served less than 2 years of JFK's term after he was assassinated. If he had been more popular he could have been elected to, and served his two full terms in addition to the time had replaced Kennedy.
edit: From Wikipedia "As he had served less than 24 months of President Kennedy's term, Johnson was constitutionally permitted to run for a second full term under the provisions of the 22nd Amendment.[114][115]"
Correct. LBJ got more done in the less-than two years than Kennedy had. See Robert Caro, volume 4 of his LBJ bio. My first memory of a president is LBJ saying he wouldn't run again. What we didn't know at the time is he was bluffing, and secretly hoped his party would renominate him.
there are at least three loopholes. amend the constitution, in the usual way, while in office. amend the constitution via a constitutional convention. suspend the constitution during the national emergency, with some help from the military and shooting any supreme court justices who don't want to go along with it. "one man, one vote, one time."this would take someone even more monomaniacal than lbj. it wouldn't be that hard to write a movie where a schwarzenegger type tries it. oh, another loophole: they are divorced now, but arnold could have had maria run for president. then he just has to change wives every 8 years.
For arguments sake, if we had a Vladimir Putin type scenario where a powerful leader had muted all opposition, and was overwhelmingly electorally popular:
Could such a President, after two terms, run and be elected to the house, nominate a pair of pawns to win the presidency and vice presidency, the former president be elected to be speaker of the house followed by the new president/vice president pawns resigning?
That would be just one more than Putin got to do it. Seems plausible.
Well, if you have a pair of pawns holding the office for you, there's no need to make them resign. Imagine for a moment that Biden is secretly a Putinesque evil genius. He could be running the show, and find another figurehead in 2016. Caligula is said to have named his horse, Incitatus, as consul, a sort of co-president.
You can pull that tinfoil hat on as tight as you like - have a dynasty of power smoking cigars in a back room saying "...and then BO beats HRC and pips JMcC... I'll have a minion start on the inauguration speech."
With OPs question impossible (...be elected to..) this seems like the next best thing for the narrow question of three plus successive POTUS terms.
The operative Constitutional sections are Article 2, the 12th Amendment, the 20th Amendment, the 22nd Amendment, and the 25th amendment.
As others have noted, someone like LBJ could've theoretically served close to 9 years. So in a scenario where a VP is elevated to President for less than 2 of the remaining years of the current Presidential term, the 22nd Amendment allows them to run twice more and serve up to 10 years. But that's not quite a full term.
Beyond that, I can think of one potential scenario that would allow someone to hold three terms. Imagine a two-term President, an elevated VP who is in office for 10 years, etc. and then imagine that they are elected to the House of Representatives. This person makes their way to the Speakership, and then the President and VP are both killed/incapacitated/disqualified, or they both resign. Under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 the Speaker of the House would then become the President to serve the remainder of the term. They would be ineligible to be re-elected under the 22nd Amendment, but if it was early in the term (say before or during the Inauguration) they could serve a whole other term.
I should also note that the above scenario works for anyone in the Presidential line of succession-- but the Speaker requires the least amount of assumptions. Our person could also be President pro tem. of the Senate or a Secretary. Also, there would probably be some court battles over this since I'm not fully sure how the word "elect" or "elected" would be treated in this case. The 22nd bars people from being elected if they've served 2 terms-- but being appointed under the Presidential Succession Act may or may not mean the same thing.
So an all-powerful Putin-type leader could engineer the POTUS/VPOTUS election/resignation and potentially do this indefinitely.
Sure, but I don't think that's a useful answer. That isn't a loophole; it's a coup d'etat.
The other problem is that the Speaker cannot be both the President and a Representative at the same time. So the Speaker would have to resign from the House. So in order to continue he would have to be re-elected to the House, take back the Speakership, and then engineer the whole thing again.
A former president could become president from a line of succession, but could not run for the office after holding it until the next election.
No, nobody would be able to be directly elected to the office of president for more than two years, but the constitution does mandate that in certain circumstances, a single person may serve two full terms and one half term. This means that, if a president were to step down two years or more into his term, his vice president would be able to carry out the rest of that term as well as still be elected president for two more terms.
From the 22nd Amendment:
This question looks like it's already been answered, but I read a funny interview with Bill Clinton a while back where he said he did everything he could to figure out a way around this, and he just couldn't do it.
The 22nd amendment seems to only deal with restrictions on being elected President:
"No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice..."
I am sure it would be challenged all over the place but I don't think the scenario you presented would be unconstitutional.
I think that under such a circumstance, the Presidency would skip the former President and go to the one next in line, but I'm not sure. It IS possible for a Vice President to serve more than two terms. Say the President dies just over halfway through their term. The Vice President can serve out the remainder of the term, and run for re-election twice, giving a max of 10 years. For example, LBJ could have ran again in 1968, and if he won, he would have been President from November 1963 to January 1973-a little over 9 years in office
There's no constitutional or legal basis for 'skipping' someone legally placed in the line of succession, and the difference between 'running' for President and taking over the presidency as part of a legal succession leaves the law in a grey area. It would almost certainly be heard by the Supreme Court.
It'd be feasible for a President to resign in his/her first year of office allowing the VP to be sworn in and have just under 3 full terms.
Nope. 22nd Amendment says you can only run for a second term as president if you havent served more than two years after filling the office vacated by your president.
Thanks for the clarification. Guess I need to get myself back into civics class...