A “Hillary Clinton” amendment to the Constitution

Given the possibility that Hillary Clinton will be elected president, and given the fact that when a wife follows her husband in executive office it effectively means the continuation of the husband in that office (think of Lurleen Wallace succeeding George Wallace as governor of Alabama), I think it is self-evident that the constitutional limits on a president’s term in office should apply to the wife of a president as well as to the president himself.

The Twenty-second Amendment, ratified in 1951, reads:

Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the 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 the President more than once.

I propose the following amendment to the Constitution:

No person shall be elected to the office of the President who is the spouse of a person who is ineligible for the Presidency under the Twenty-Second Amendment to this Constitution.

Though it is too late to pass such an amendment to stop Hillary Clinton from becoming president, I predict that if she becomes president, after she leaves office such an amendment will be proposed and ratified, just as, after the death of Franklin Roosevelt, the Twenty-second Amendment was passed to formalize the informal but revered tradition that Roosevelt had transgressed by serving for more than two terms.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 28, 2007 01:05 PM | Send