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A Modest Proposal: Barack Obama Should Be Hillary Clinton's Running Mate

Obama as Hillary's running mate


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I'm no US constitutional scholar, like the President supposedly is, but it's my understanding that he has been elected to two terms as President and therefore he cannot stand for election to any position that may lead to a third term as President.

I'll stand by to be corrected.

I should have read further.....you beat me to it

I find it amusing that two Canadians are correcting Americans on their own constitution.
 
I don't see anyone suggesting such. Nixon was not innocent. Barack "Hussein" Obama's crimes are just worse. If Obama were a republican with a democrat controlled congress, he would be facing impeachment proceedings now.

Yeah that's why the Republican controlled House passed all sorts of impeachment proceedings.

I really don't think there would be half as many conservatives if it weren't for the persecution complex.
 
The 12th amendment is pretty clear that anyone no longer eligible to run for president cannot run for vice president. I do not see anything in the 22nd amendment that would invalidate that.

I think there's a subtle difference that you are disregarding. The Twenty-Second 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.

It doesn't say that such a person is ineligible to be President again, only that he is ineligible from being elected President. I just don't see anything in this wording that prohibits him from being elected to any other position, which would put him in the line of succession to the Presidency, nor of assuming the Presidency if those ahead of him in that line are unable to do so.

And the Twelfth Amendment does not say, as you claim it does, that one who is ineligible to run for President, or to be elected President cannot run for Vice President. It says that “…no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”


You are assuming that being ineligible to be elected President means that one is ineligible to hold the office of President. Your assumption seems logical on its face, but given that there are other ways to become President than by being directly elected into that position, the wording of the Constitution just does not support this assumption.
 
Of course. Because Nixon was a Republican, which in your mind means he is incapable of doing anything bad.

I certainly would not claim that. Yes, he did something bad, for which he rightfully was compelled to resign. If he didn't resign, he should have been impeached and removed from office.

What is striking is that the two most recent Democratic Presidents have engaged openly in far broader and more serious corruption than anything of which Nixon was ever credibly accused, and have not been held nearly as accountable for their misdeeds as Nixon was. And now we have a credible Candidate for President, who, when her husband was President, was party to much of his corruption.
 
I don't see anyone suggesting such. Nixon was not innocent. Barack "Hussein" Obama's crimes are just worse. If Obama were a republican with a democrat controlled congress, he would be facing impeachment proceedings now.

He'd have been impeached and removed from office by now; probably during his first term.
 
Of course. Because Nixon was a Republican, which in your mind means he is incapable of doing anything bad.

You have to admit, if modern day Hillary Clinton was back in Nixon's time and she deleted scads of her emails - let's substitute tapes, since emails didn't exist back then, she'd have been strung up and serving time in prison. Nixon retained all his damning recorded evidence and several administration officials served time because of it. It's possible, the Washington Post back then wouldn't have been interested in going after a high ranking Democrat, but it was a different time when illegal actions by politicians, once known, weren't just disregarded as politics.
 
The 12th amendment is pretty clear that anyone no longer eligible to run for president cannot run for vice president. I do not see anything in the 22nd amendment that would invalidate that.





I agree in regards to his second term. In my opinion trading five murderous Taliban terrorist leaders for a single US military deserter does amount to giving aid and comfort to the enemy. I also agree that his attempt to go around congress with virtual amnesty to illegal immigrants is highly unconstitutional. And Obamacare enacted in his first term is a clear violation of the tenth amendment regardless of the Supreme Court ruling otherwise.



Many might find this a reach, but add in there his failure to respond to the Killings in Benghazi. Sending in the "FBI" to let it fade off the radar was political geneous, but also smacks of giving aid and comfort to the enemy...those "spontaneous demonstrators" are now recruiting and training the guys who have a stronghold there.

Americans seem to want to ignore how much terrorism has grown under this fraud
 
So he could never be, say, speaker of the house? That doesn't sound right.

I asked the same question earlier, and it seems likely that he could run for a House seat, could be elected Speaker of the House, but could not move up the ladder to VP if the President or VP were somehow removed from office.
 
I should have read further.....you beat me to it

I find it amusing that two Canadians are correcting Americans on their own constitution.

Good morning F&L

In fairness it was also a Canadian who created the OP and started the thread. But it gave liberals a tingle so it's not all bad.
 
I asked the same question earlier, and it seems likely that he could run for a House seat, could be elected Speaker of the House, but could not move up the ladder to VP if the President or VP were somehow removed from office.

I do not see anything in the Constitution that prevents that. He is only prevented from directly being elected again to the Presidency.
 
I do not see anything in the Constitution that prevents that. He is only prevented from directly being elected again to the Presidency.

This wording, from your post #53:

“…no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”

would suggest to me that even though he could serve as Speaker of the House, he would be ineligible to move up because he's ineligible to hold the office of President now that he's been elected to two terms.
 
Good morning F&L

In fairness it was also a Canadian who created the OP and started the thread. But it gave liberals a tingle so it's not all bad.



I realized that after I posted, and JANFU has no obligation to know the line of succession.

And yes it gave liberals a tingle AND showed a lot more.

Imagine, CJ, now please be seated for your own saftey, a ticket of Clinton-Clinton, and then start thinking about Canadian foreign policy in that regard.....
 
Because of the interest in this, I asked friend of mine who studied Constitutional Law to help as I had plenty of question on this myself.

He said it comes down to "general interpretation" by reading all of the Constitution including all the Amendments as one context (even if one changes something.) The qualifications for Vice President for this subject are the same as President, so all that is left is the interpretation of "to run for" vs. "to serve." But from a standpoint of consistency and intention of these Articles it seems clear there was no intention for a two term President to turn around and "serve" as Vice President.

That analysis seems to be most consistent with the spirit of the Constitution and the supporting documentation of the period on the anti-aristocratic sentiment shared by the authors. To get around that someone would have to craft a good argument that speaks precisely against why these Articles were phrased as they were. It was his opinion that was not likely to happen.
 
I realized that after I posted, and JANFU has no obligation to know the line of succession.

And yes it gave liberals a tingle AND showed a lot more.

Imagine, CJ, now please be seated for your own saftey, a ticket of Clinton-Clinton, and then start thinking about Canadian foreign policy in that regard.....

Why not go for the all girl tag team of Hillary and Chelsea? Bill could be the Ambassador to Hell.
 
Good morning F&L

In fairness it was also a Canadian who created the OP and started the thread. But it gave liberals a tingle so it's not all bad.

It also sends discussion into what the 2 amendments mean. As noted in this link, even Constitutional scholars are divided.
And we all know it would be off to SCOTUS.

Hillary Clinton Barack Obama Vice President | The New Republic


I’ll grant that if Democrats nominate Barack Obama to be their vice presidential candidate next year, it would be somewhat controversial. But here Democrats can borrow tactically from the literal-minded conservatives who have seized on syntactic oddities to unravel Obama’s domestic agenda. As a purely textual matter, the Constitution merely prohibits Obama from being elected to a third term. It doesn’t necessarily prohibit him from actually being president again, should Hillary Clinton no longer be able to serve. And were he on the ticket, Clinton’s potential liabilities with Obama loyalists would disappear.

FindLaw's Writ - Dorf: The Case For A Gore-clinton Ticket
 
Yeah that's why the Republican controlled House passed all sorts of impeachment proceedings.

These days, establishment republicans are afraid of their own shadow. Obama would just about have to be caught raping girl scouts before the republicans would start impeachment proceedings. Having said that, it is just not worth it. There have been two impeached presidents in this nation's history. If Nixon had not resigned, there would be three. The two are Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton(Hillary's philandering spouse). Neither of them were convicted in the Senate and thrown out of office.


I really don't think there would be half as many conservatives if it weren't for the persecution complex.

Here you are in your own way in this thread accusing conservatives of partisanship, yet you appear to be the most partisan poster on the thread.
 
You have to admit, if modern day Hillary Clinton was back in Nixon's time and she deleted scads of her emails - let's substitute tapes, since emails didn't exist back then, she'd have been strung up and serving time in prison. Nixon retained all his damning recorded evidence and several administration officials served time because of it. It's possible, the Washington Post back then wouldn't have been interested in going after a high ranking Democrat, but it was a different time when illegal actions by politicians, once known, weren't just disregarded as politics.

Except that we don't know what the e-mails contained. Do we need to see the blow by blow of her grandkid's diapers? Some have conjectured that it contained evidence of something, but at this point it's jist conjecture. It would have been very hard to pin anything on Nixon if the tapes had been erased because there would be no evidence or wrongdoing. Which is where we are with Hillary - political adversaries conjecture that there was evidence destroyed, but there's no evidence.

That said, I wouldn't put it past her. There's also no office to remove her from, so it comes down to if the GOP can make the accusation stick. Outside of the true believers, that'll be almost impossible.
 
Here you are in your own way in this thread accusing conservatives of partisanship, yet you appear to be the most partisan poster on the thread.


I'm not the one saying that a President should be impeached because I disagree with him.
 
I think there's a subtle difference that you are disregarding. The Twenty-Second 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.

It doesn't say that such a person is ineligible to be President again, only that he is ineligible from being elected President. I just don't see anything in this wording that prohibits him from being elected to any other position, which would put him in the line of succession to the Presidency, nor of assuming the Presidency if those ahead of him in that line are unable to do so.

And the Twelfth Amendment does not say, as you claim it does, that one who is ineligible to run for President, or to be elected President cannot run for Vice President. It says that “…no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”


You are assuming that being ineligible to be elected President means that one is ineligible to hold the office of President. Your assumption seems logical on its face, but given that there are other ways to become President than by being directly elected into that position, the wording of the Constitution just does not support this assumption.

Perhaps the following will help:


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U.S. Constitution - Article 2 Section 1 - The U.S. Constitution Online



Constitutional Topic: Presidential Line of Succession


The Constitutional Topics pages at the USConstitution.net site are presented to delve deeper into topics than can be provided on the Glossary Page or in the FAQ pages. This Topic Page concerns the Presidential Line of Succession. The Line of Succession is mentioned in two places in the Constitution; in Article 2, Section 1, and the 25th Amendment. The Topic Page for the Presidential Disability is also of interest.

The 25th Amendment reiterates what is stated in Article 2, Section 1: that the Vice President is the direct successor of the President. He or she will become President if the President cannot serve for whatever reason. The 25th also provides for a President who is temporarily disabled, such as if the President has a surgical procedure or if he or she become mentally unstable.

The original Constitution provides that if neither the President nor Vice President can serve, the Congress shall provide law stating who is next in line. Currently that law exists as 3 USC 19, a section of the U.S. Code. This law was established as part of the Presidential Succession Act of 1947. There, the following line of succession is provided:

Speaker of the House of Representatives
President Pro Tempore of the Senate
Secretary of State
Secretary of the Treasury
Secretary of Defense
Attorney General
Secretary of the Interior
Secretary of Agriculture
Secretary of Commerce
Secretary of Labor
Secretary of Health and Human Services
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Secretary of Transportation
Secretary of Energy
Secretary of Education
Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Secretary of Homeland Security

The only exception to the line provided in the law states that to ascend to the Presidency, the next person in line must be constitutionally eligible. Any person holding an office in the line of succession who, for example, is not a naturally-born citizen cannot become President. In this case, that person would be skipped and the next eligible person in the line would become President.


http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_succ.html

Notice that last paragraph. That pretty much shoots down the suggestion that any two term president can make it back into the white house by line of succession from congress. A two term president definitely falls into the category of "not constitutionally eligible.
 
I certainly would not claim that. Yes, he did something bad, for which he rightfully was compelled to resign. If he didn't resign, he should have been impeached and removed from office.

Agreed. If Nixon had chose to attempt to ride out impeachment hearings, he would definitely have been impeached and then likely convicted and thrown out of office. The Senate was firmly controlled by democrats and they hated him. Even republicans considered him a liability. Senator Goldwater made it clear to him that he could only count on 15 votes against conviction. And you are correct that the democrats employ a double standard. Bill Clinton, Obama, and even Hillary have commited worse crimes then Watergate, however they have a "D" in front of their names on the ballot. Bill Clinton at least allowed a special prosecutor to be appointed to look into his scandals. Obama simply attempts to ride them out with the hash tag: "Nothing to see here, let's move on".
 
Many might find this a reach, but add in there his failure to respond to the Killings in Benghazi. Sending in the "FBI" to let it fade off the radar was political geneous, but also smacks of giving aid and comfort to the enemy...those "spontaneous demonstrators" are now recruiting and training the guys who have a stronghold there.

Americans seem to want to ignore how much terrorism has grown under this fraud

I think releasing five of the bloodiest Taliban terrorists imaginable in a trade for a US deserter certainly qualifies as "giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The other issues I mentioned are just constitutional issues. I do agree that the white house coming up with the cover story of "It was the video" also amounts to giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
 
I asked the same question earlier, and it seems likely that he could run for a House seat, could be elected Speaker of the House, but could not move up the ladder to VP if the President or VP were somehow removed from office.

Yes...he could definitely run for congress and theoretically end up in that line of succession, however he would be skipped due to constitutional ineligibility to be president again.
 
Perhaps the following will help:
·
·
·​
The only exception to the line provided in the law states that to ascend to the Presidency, the next person in line must be constitutionally eligible. Any person holding an office in the line of succession who, for example, is not a naturally-born citizen cannot become President. In this case, that person would be skipped and the next eligible person in the line would become President.[/I]

Constitutional Topic: Presidential Line of Succession - The U.S. Constitution Online - USConstitution.net

Notice that last paragraph. That pretty much shoots down the suggestion that any two term president can make it back into the white house by line of succession from congress. A two term president definitely falls into the category of "not constitutionally eligible.

You're still missing what I see as the critical distinction. The Twenty-Second Amendment does not say that one who has already served two terms as President is ineligible for the office; but only ineligible to be elected to that office. That does not preclude assuming the office through succession.
 
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