Silly Speculation

MSNBC has an article up about the possibility of Bill Clinton to serving as Vice-President in a future administration, and his ability to become President under the succession laws in the event that the President he serves were to become incapacitated.

My first response was that such speculation was utterly absurd, for the simple reason that Clinton wouldn't be eligible to serve, since he can't be President again. Things are apparently not so simple, however. The text of the 22nd Amendment bars an individual from being elected to a third term as President. The Constitution itself, of course, is silent on the issue - but it does say that a Vice-President must be eligible to serve as President. Of course, the rules require that an individual have reached the age of 35 and be a natural born citizen - Clinton obviously is eligible Constitutionally, since he's served as President before. The question, then, turns on whether the 22nd Amendment makes him ineligible to serve as President, or only ineligible to be ELECTED President.

A literal reading of the Amendment's text suggests that nothing makes Clinton Constitutionally ineligible to serve as President. As a result, he could likely stand as Vice-President, and succeed to the Presidency if necessary. Unfortunately, this would seem to be absolutely against the intent of the individuals who drafted and passed the 22nd Amendment, who by almost all accounts intended to prevent anyone from serving as President beyond two full terms.

Of course, language matters. If the intent was to prevent a former President who had served two full terms from serving as President in the future, they should have said so. If the statutory language is clear, it should be enforced - legislative intent is a convenient fiction, after all, for how can a body consisting of 535 members (the House and Senate) and the legislatures of at least 3/4 of the states, be said to have any "single" intent? The answer of course is that they didn't - different people voted yes for different reasons. Additionally, no record of legislative intent can possibly be complete, because not everything is recorded. It seems to me that you have to take the language at face value.

This doesn't mean, however, that Clinton should take the plunge and run for VP. Common sense should tell anyone that the purpose of passing the 22nd Amendment was to limit the amount of service at the pinnacle of the executive branch. That should be respected (although I disagree with it), and Clinton should put from his mind any thought of running for anything else. He has entered the "former President" stage of his career, and it should stay that way.

Finally, for anyone suggesting that Hillary should pick Bill as her running mate, that's not going to happen. For one thing, Hillary couldn't handle not being the center of attention in her own administration - no President could. But there's one more significant problem; the President and Vice-President can't have the same state of residency under the 12th Amendment. The two Clinton's may not have the best marriage (that's a cheap shot from me), but they do share a residence in New York. One of them would have to move out - and if that happens, I don't think that Hillary would be picking Bill as her VP.