A complicated question about the 22nd amendment
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  A complicated question about the 22nd amendment
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Author Topic: A complicated question about the 22nd amendment  (Read 1030 times)
Sir Mohamed
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« on: November 29, 2015, 03:56:45 PM »

The 22nd amendment limits the presidency to two terms for each person. However; de facto a president could serve ten years in total. A succeeding Vice President with two years or less in his "first" term could be reelected twice.
So official sources tell us, only LBJ could have been president for longer than eight years since he was not term-limited in 1968 (only 14 months remaining in JFK's term). Gerald Ford would have been term-limited in 1980, if he had won in 1976, because Nixon's second term was less than half over at time of his resignation in August 1974.

But now an intersting scenario that just came to my mind: What if Gerald Ford would have been (after his 1976 defeat) Ronald Reagan's Vice President? He was seriously considered as such in the 1980 election and the plan only failed because he demanded Henry Kissinger in the cabinet again. So let's say he would have been Vice President under Reagan and the latter does not survive the March 1981 assasination attempt. Once again, Ford assumes the presidency. Would he have been term-limited in 1984, although he was never elected president? If not, he would have been president for more than ten years (August 1974 to January 1977 and March 1981 to January 1989). A combined ten years and three months.
You could even extend this time span: let's say Nixon had resigned in August 1973 (Ford is already VP in that scenario) and Reagan is shoot a few days after the inauguration. Would make an eleven year presidency in total.
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
Ernest
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« Reply #1 on: November 29, 2015, 09:02:34 PM »

In the given scenario, Ford could run in 1984.  For that matter, if a person were to assume the presidency twice, but serve less than two years each time, then even if they served more than two years total as the successor to two different Presidents, they would be eligible to run for two terms of their own.
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Figs
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« Reply #2 on: November 30, 2015, 12:21:05 PM »

Yeah, it looks from my reading like the wording specifies it has to be two years of a term, not two total years of several terms.
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