Not when the literal meaning is clear. If I write a law making the speed limit 75 mph and the legislature passes it - but I intended to make the limit 75 kilometers per hour - it doesn't matter - the law was passed saying 75 mph. The states ratified a 22nd amendment that only restricts the number of times one may be elected President - if the intent were more broad than that it doesn't matter, states don't ratify intent, they ratify words.
You are completely wrong on this. This isn't even a matter of opinion. You're unknowledgeable, period.
LOL! So the MEANING of a laws text is irrelevant?
That is not what I said. I said that you are unknowledgeable. So here, let me educate you.....
The original constitution set out qualifications for the Presidency, and a method for choosing the President. It made no differentiation between being elected to the office directly, or succeeding to the office via the Vice Presidency. As the framers established the constitution, the constitution understood that the normal process of becoming President was through the election process. There was no distinction in the eyes of the constitution between being qualified to hold the office via direct election into the post, versus being qualified to gain the post through the "back door" of the Vice Presidency. It is unthinkable that the intent of the framers was to allow constitutional qualifications for the office of President that could be so easily be ignored with some simple political sleight-of-hand.
The 12th amendment, ratified during the time of founding father governance later changed the method for choosing the President and Vice President. Because the selection of the Vice President now became, for constitutional purposes, a separate affair, it the authors of the amendment stipulated that no person who was not eligible to be President could be selected to be Vice President. Here, the constitution still understands that the normal process of becoming President is through election directly to that office. The potential ascension of a Vice President to the office is understood to be a reserve backup plan in case the Presidency should become vacant through some emergency. There can be no doubt that at the time of the 12 amendment's ratification, the constitutional requirement was that any qualification to be elected President would also be a requirement to be elected Vice President. That requirement for the Vice Presidency becomes present in the constitution by no later than this time. The 12th amendment in its structure serves are as a wholesale replacement of the previous relevant portion of the constitution. It is not an addition, it is a change. If the recorded constitution were maintained as we do statutory law, the previously applying portion of Art 2, sec 1 would be eliminated, and the 12th amendment inserted in its place. This much is evident when we consider that there are portions of the 12th amendment that are mere repetitions of what is said in Art. 2 sec. 1. Where the 12th amendment merely an addition, such repetitions would not be necessary. Furthermore, the goal to be accomplished by the 12th amendment would not be attainable merely by adding new material to the constitution. A positive change of earlier material was logically required.
This leads us to consider whether the 22nd amendment removes that qualification for the Vice Presidency. The answer is that it does not. The 22nd amendment does not represent a change in the process set out by the 12th amendment. Instead, it represents an
addition. This is evident from the fact that the amendment does not contain such repetitious material as is found in the 12th amendment. Instead, the 22nd amendment adds new material that becomes part of the constitution in conjunction with the 12th amendment, and the constitution's understanding of qualifications for the Vice Presidency under the 12th amendment, i.e. that a person not eligible to be elected President is neither eligible to be elected Vice President. Absent anything in the 22nd amendment that specifically removes this requirement for the Vice Presidency, the same is still in effect.
While this seems sufficient to defeat the notion that the 22nd amendment would allow a term limited President to become Vice President later, even if we entertain the notion that the 22nd amendment
may have 'accidentally' affected the constitution's preexisting qualifications for the Vice Presidency, no subsequent analysis is able to bring us that all the same. If such a notion is to be entertained, than it cannot be denied that at the very least, the matter becomes ambiguous on its face, and we must now endeavor to consider the purposes and intent behind the ratification of the 22nd amendment.
Prior to the administration of FDR no President had ever served more than two terms. President Washington may have likely succeeded in being elected, however he explicitly refused nomination to a third term. After that, Presidents (like Jefferson) voluntarily declined to seek a third term in office. The writings of Jefferson and others indicate to us that clearly the founders considered the possibility of a President serving many terms in office to be repugnant. While a handful of Presidents would eventually attempt election to third terms, none were successful until Roosevelt, who died in office in his fourth term. It was Roosevelt's death in office that prompted the penning of the 22nd amendment, so that no person would ever again hold the office of President for however indefinite a time as he might so choose, limited by nothing more than his own political prowess. There can be no doubt that the intent of the 22nd amendment was in not in any way to remove the 12th amendment's requirement that only those eligible to be elected President could themselves be Vice President.
Wherefore, premises considered, inasmuch as the 12th amendment is recognized to have set the qualification that in order to be Vice President one must be constitutionally eligible to be elected President, and where the 22nd amendment does not contain any actual portion that removes this qualification, and cannot possibly be viewed as ever having had such an intent anyway, it is so concluded that that constitution via the 12th and 22nd amendments prohibits Bill Clinton from becoming Vice President.
