Bob78164 wrote: ↑Thu May 12, 2022 11:28 pm
wbtravis007 wrote: ↑Thu May 12, 2022 10:18 pm
Bob78164 wrote: ↑Thu May 12, 2022 9:27 pm
The article is an opinion piece that essentially adopts the old semantic argument that I think has essentially no chance of being adopted. The issue is whether the Twenty-Second Amendment limits qualification only to those people seeking “election” as President. What possible reason could anyone have for such a limit?
This is an argument that only a lawyer could love. —Bob
This is kind of gobbledygooky.
I’m almost always on board with your takes here, and think that you’re brilliant, but in your last couple of posts in this thread I think you’re a little off your game.
You okay?
I’m saying that it’s a semantically permissible argument that no sane judge will buy because it utterly ignores the real-world purpose of the Amendment, which was to prevent anyone from serving more than two terms, as FDR had. There’s no way anyone actually intended that loophole and it’s easy enough to read the language of the Amendment to avoid the silliness, so that’s what any sane judge would do. —Bob
Well ... there you go again. Yeah, I've gotten your point all along. This time it's expressed with more clarity than the two that I quoted, but not more persuasively.
It's at least a little shrill to suggest that any sane person would see this your way. To me, it makes a lot more sense to just go with what the Amendment says, instead of what most people think that it says. I see plain English, not ambiguity. You've mentioned a couple of times that it is
semantically possible (or permissible or whatever) to interpret it my way. I say it's almost impossible to support any other interpretation without employing tortured arguments. I can't help but wonder whether you have even read it. If there were contradictory clauses that would support the need to try to interpret the intent, that would be different, of course. There aren't.
And, if you were going to try to determine the intent of the hundreds of people involved in the drafting, passing and ratification by the requisite 36 states of that Amendment, shouldn't you consider that it's conceivable that a fair number of them might not have supported it if it included a provision that would prevent a party from nominating a candidate for VP that its nominee for president preferred, notwithstanding that that individual would not be allowed to run for the presidency again by virtue of the Amendment, even if that would result in this "loophole?"
It would have been easy enough to include a provision that the former presidents described in the Amendment would not be eligible to run for VP, either, or to specify that they could not
serve (rather that that they could not be
elected), if that was the intent, instead of having to rely on the very weak argument that the 12th Amendment would supply the rationale for that prohibition, notwithstanding that that Amendment clearly applies to age, residence and citizenship.
I get that you think that it should say what most people think it does -- (and that you and they want it to). So, I'd suggest getting behind an effort to correct the problem caused by the poor drafting, if that's what it was. Until then, I will continue to say: You don't like it? Tough titty.
Biden/Obama '24, baby!