Can Donald J. Trump be elected for a third term as President?
Most people say “no.”
And they are absolutely right.
The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution says: “No person shall be elected to the office of 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 President more than once.”
Absolutely clear. It even deals with a partial term.
What it doesn’t say, however, is that no person may serve as President for more than two terms?
It doesn’t say that Donald J. Trump can’t run for Vice-President, with a candidate for President whose only campaign promise is to resign on Day One (so that Vice-President Trump automatically becomes President Trump again, for a third time).
It doesn’t say that Donald J. Trump can’t run for the House of Representatives, be elected Speaker of the House, and ascend to the Presidency when the incumbent President and Vice President resign so that he can serve again as President.
How would a court interpret the existing Constitutional provision? Or a parallel term limit provision in your nonprofit bylaws? According to what the court thinks it was intended to mean? Or according to what it says? But more importantly, why should you have to go to court to get an answer?
The Constitution, like bylaws, can be amended. But it is a time-consuming process and may be unrealistic as a practical matter. Worse, it may be proposed only so that the issue doesn’t arise again.
Join us on January 14th for our annual Webinar on “Bylaws: The ‘Constitution’ of Nonprofits.” Learn how to say what you mean and mean what you say. Don’t make a court divine what you meant, instead of what you said or didn’t say. Litigation is time-consuming, expensive, and divisive. Well written bylaws can make the rules clear so that there is no need to ask a court to decide what they mean.
Comments
I agree that this helps your argument, but it is still an argument — and may not be correct. What does it mean to be “ineligible to the office of President?” I can read this sentence in the 12th Amendment to say that whatever the election process, only a person “eligible” to be President may serve as President or Vice President. The three eligibility criteria spelled out in Article II Section 1 Clause 5 require only that the individual must be a natural born citizen, more than 35 years old and a resident for 14 years within the United States. Trump meets those criteria. The 12th Amendment and the 22nd Amendment talk about the election process, not basic eligibility to serve.
Your objection also fails to counter my second hypothetical about ascending to the Presidency from the position of Speaker of the House. John Quincy Adams was elected to the House after he served as President. He could have been elected Speaker. If that happened to Trump today, he could be in line for the Presidency if the elected President and Vice President were to resign or get blown up by terrorists on Inauguration Day.
All of this would have been irrelevant if the drafters of the 22nd Amendment had simply said that no person could serve more than two terms as President. That was the point of the question. You can write these rules so that this kind of tortured argument is not required to understand what they mean. We can help bylaw writers do that. —Don Kramer
I disagree with your answer to the Question of the Week and your worries that Donald Trump could run for Vice President and get around the Constitutional barrier that way.
How about the last sentence of the 12th Amendment? “But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.” —T.O.