Wednesday, November 7, 2007
22nd amendment and what does "elected" mean?
After reading Charles Krauthammer's piece (thanks, Laura), I have many thoughts and a couple of important questions. Was the Constitutional amendment that was instituted after FDR's four elections - the one about a person being permitted to be elected no more than twice - not really meant to be as simple and straightforward as it sounds? Does it depend on what the word "elected" means? I thought the whole point was quite simple: no one should be elected to the presidency more than twice, end of story. Thus a vice president who succeeds to the office in some kind of dire situation would be the occasional person in the office for anything just shy of twelve years even though only elected twice. But no one else could be there more than twice.
Then flash ahead to this election cycle and Billary. Were she to be elected, it is altogether implausible that he would say something like "no, no, I can't tell you what I think, dear, as you are president now." In essence he'd be in office too, albeit sideways. The amendment fashioners were hidebound by their own traditions and probably never even thought for a second that they needed to account for the wife of a former president running for president herself but I wish they had. I also sure hope they weren't being crafty and deliberately allowing for what happened in Argentina.
More to the point, it really is a problem. Are the Republicans not mentioning it so as to save the issue for the two-person contest, assuming she wins the nomination? But shouldn't they be hammering at it now?? Or are they afraid it will become a non-issue if they jump on it too soon?
Then flash ahead to this election cycle and Billary. Were she to be elected, it is altogether implausible that he would say something like "no, no, I can't tell you what I think, dear, as you are president now." In essence he'd be in office too, albeit sideways. The amendment fashioners were hidebound by their own traditions and probably never even thought for a second that they needed to account for the wife of a former president running for president herself but I wish they had. I also sure hope they weren't being crafty and deliberately allowing for what happened in Argentina.
More to the point, it really is a problem. Are the Republicans not mentioning it so as to save the issue for the two-person contest, assuming she wins the nomination? But shouldn't they be hammering at it now?? Or are they afraid it will become a non-issue if they jump on it too soon?
Labels: 2008 election, politics
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