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Can Biden Be Veep Forever? - The Daily Beast

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/16/can-biden-be-veep-forever.html

CAN BIDEN BE VEEP FOREVER?

In the financial world, inflation is defined as “too much money chasing too
few goods.”

In the world of political journalism, inflation is “too many pundits
chasing too few scenarios.” Like the editors of *Cosmopolitan* struggling
each month to find new sexual positions, implements, and erogenous zones,
scribes are already running out of ways to chronicle the strategies and
prospects of presidential contenders: “How Marco Can Stop Jeb”; “How Paul
Can Block Cruz and Huckabee”; “How A Fiorina-Santorum Alliance Can Overcome
The Pataki Threat.” Meanwhile, we have only recently crossed the halfway
point of Barack Obama’s second term.

Is there any unexplored scenario for 2016, any notion that offers something
genuinely new to contemplate? Yes.

I urge Vice President Joe Biden to run for…vice president.

I know Mr. Biden wants to be president. He ran twice, leaving the 1988 race
before it began, amid charges of plagiarism, and making a respectable
showing twenty years later by winning 1 percent in the Iowa caucuses. If he
can figure out a way to run a competitive race against Hillary Clinton, he
will likely try again. (I should quote you poll numbers here to demonstrate
how daunting this will be, but I treat polls a year before the first
caucuses the way I treat month-old unrefrigerated sushi).

Biden is entitled to argue that his forty-plus years in federal office (he
won his U.S. Senate seat in 1972 at the age of 29) gives him an unmatched
wealth of experience. He has seen the White House at the President’s right
arm. He has no doubt absorbed a host of lessons about what works and what
doesn’t.

So how does he best ensure that he can put that wealth of experience to
work? By entering an almost certainly futile contest for the presidency? Or
by staying exactly where he is?

“Wait!” I hear you objecting. “He’s already served two terms. He can’t run
again!”

There is no Constitutional reason at all why Biden cannot seek a third term
as vice president.

Not so, my semi-informed friend. There is no Constitutional reason at all
why Biden cannot seek a third term as vice president. The 22nd Amendment,
passed by a Republican Congress in 1947 looking for post-mortem payback for
FDR’s four terms, and ratified by the states in 1951, says simply:

“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than
twice.” It also says that a vice president who succeeded to the Presidency
for two years or more can only run for one full term. (That’s why LBJ could
have run for a second full-term in 1968, while Gerald Ford would have been
a lame duck had he beaten Carter in 1976.)

Now there are intriguing questions about what this two-term amendment
covers. For instance, could Bill Clinton run for vice president? (The 12th
Amendment says the vice president must have the same Constitutional
qualifications as the president, but that may cover matters of age and
birthplace.) What if George W. Bush ran for Congress, was elected Speaker,
and was thus next in line when tragedy struck both POTUS and VPOTUS? After
all, the 22nd Amendment talks about who can be “elected “ president, not
who can serve.
[image: 150215-greenfield-biden-veep-forever-tease-2]

These questions may keep a few law professors gainfully employed, but they
have nothing to do with Joe Biden’s eligibility. Neither the 22nd Amendment
nor any piece of legislation offers an impediment to Biden staying on. Nor
does history. George Clinton was Veep during Thomas Jefferson’s second term
and James Madison’s first term. John C. Calhoun was John Quincy Adams’ VP,
and stayed on during Andrew Jackson’s first term.

The harder question, of course, is political. Would it be an advantage to
the Democratic presidential candidate to have Biden by her side? The answer
lies in what happens over the next year and a half. If Obama winds up as
unpopular as he was in 2014, there’d be no good argument for a third Biden
term. However, President Obama’s job approval has bumped up about seven
points in the last year. If that pattern continues, Obama will find himself
at close to 60 percent by the time Democrats gather in convention, and a
Biden vice presidency might well seem an attractive “third term” idea. And,
unlike every VP who sought and won his party’s presidential nomination,
Biden would be spared the burden of trying to prove himself “his own man.”
He’d simply be the symbol of experience, free to distance himself from the
less popular policies and ideas of the outgoing Chief Executive.

Yes, it’s a radical notion; yes, it will no doubt bring scorn from those
who can only see politics in conventional terms. But it not only offers
something new and promising to our political life; it comes with a
pre-tested, ready-to-wear slogan: “Biden for Veep; Third Term’s A Charm.”


Eric D. Schwerin
ericschwerin@yahoo.com

Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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