[Frank_Discussion]

From the constitution:

"But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States."

Is BillyJeff eligible to the office of President?

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

According to the other side of the arguement, yes, he is eligible to hold the office but he is not eligible to be elected to the office. It is a hair splitting arguement, but one that is hard to defend against.

IF you agree that someone can be eligible for the office without being eligible to be elected to the office, then their arguement is understandable. I would argue that meeting the conditions of the 22nd makes you ineligible to be elected as Vice President, but would allow a former President to become, for example, Speaker of the House and be eligible for the Presidency if the President and Vice-President were killed in a short period.

But there is a little ambiguity.

[AuH2ORepublican]

"Is BillyJeff eligible to the office of President?"

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Yes, while Clinton is not eligible to be elected President, he is eligible to the office of the presidency. Either because of poor drafsmanship or intentional nuance, the 22nd amendment merely prohibits a person who has been elected president twice (or who has been elected once and served as president for over 2 years of someone else's term) from being *elected* president again. It does not prohibit such person from *becoming* president because of the line of succession (as opposed to someone who is not a natural-born citizen or is missing some other constitutional qualification for becoming president, who would have to be skipped over if he was next in line---had the president, VP, Speaker and president pro tem all died while foreign-born Henry Kissinger or Madeline Albright served as Secretary of State, they would have been skipped over and the Secretary of the Treasury would have become president). If Bill Clinton was Speaker of the House and both the president and VP died, the current succession statute dictates that he would become president, and the 22nd Am. wouldn't stop it. Same thing if he was the VP and the President died.

But John F. Kerry values his life enough not to select either of the Clintons as his VP.