California Conservative

That’s the first thing I thought when I read this Christian Science Monitor article. Let’s look at what they wrote about:

“Americans are nostalgic for the 1990s. They long for a time when terrorism was perceived as a problem confined to foreign lands and when the stock market’s rise seemed unstoppable. And, it turns out, many of them miss former President Bill Clinton.”

I ask you whether you’re feeling “nostalgic for the 1990’s”? Frankly, I didn’t mind the 90’s but it’s a big stretch to say that I’m feeling nostalgic for the ‘Scandal-a-Day Clinton administration. I’m not feeling nostalgic for the “time when terrorism was perceived as a problem confined to foreign lands”. Frankly, I much prefer today, where we take terrorism seriously and when we attack the terrorists where they are instead of cleaning up NYC after they hit us here.

While the political advisability of such a move is subject to legitimate debate, the legal issues are more straightforward. The only serious question about the constitutionality of Clinton assuming the vice presidency relates to the interplay of the Constitution’s 12th and 22nd Amendments.
The 12th Amendment was ratified following the election of 1800, which produced sustained electoral uncertainty after Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, Jefferson’s designated vice president, received the same number of electoral votes. The election was sent to the House of Representatives, which took 36 ballots to select Jefferson. The 12th Amendment thereafter required that electoral votes be cast separately for president and vice president, and specified that “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of president shall be eligible to that of vice president of the United States.”
A century and a half later, the states ratified the 22nd Amendment, largely as a response to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s four electoral victories. The amendment bars individuals from being “elected to the office of the president more than twice.”
The 22nd Amendment is often described as prohibiting an already twice-elected president, such as Clinton, from again serving as president. But the text of the amendment suggests otherwise. In preventing individuals from being elected to the presidency more than twice, the amendment does not preclude a former president from again assuming the presidency by means other than election, including succession from the vice presidency. If this view is correct, then Clinton is not “constitutionally ineligible to the office of president,” and is not barred by the 12th Amendment from being elected vice president.

Talk about parsing words. The Supreme Court would throw this out in a heartbeat. The spirit of the 12th Amendment is that no one who can’t be elected president can be nominated to be vice president. The spirit of the 22nd Amendment says that a person couldn’t seek more than 2 terms. This could only happen from the “it all depends on what the meaning of the word is is” crowd. Only from some nut that’s almost in love with Bill Clinton could write an article like this.

Look at the author’s wording. Look at the emotions he’s expressing. I’m amazed that someone still feels this strongly about a decent, though hardly great president.

I don’t give advice very often because I remember reading a book ages and ages ago, where this kid says “Socrates gave great advice. They made him drink poison.” That said, I’ll give this deranged man one bit of advice: “GET OVER IT!!!”

technorati tags: Bill Clinton, Twenty Second Amendment, Twelth Amendment

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 13th, 2006 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Election 2008, Media, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.