Can a us president serve more then 8 years,either all together or in 2
4 year terms. i guess i want to know if Clinton wanted to be predisent
again, could he. thanks john mac donald.

John,

Let's go back to primary sources for this one. You can find the 22nd
Amendment to the US Constitution at [
http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Amend.html ]:

"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. But this article shall not apply to any
person holding the office of President when this article was proposed
by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding
the office of President, or acting as President, during the term
within which this article becomes operative from holding the office of
President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

Section 2. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been
ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of
three-fourths of the several states within seven years from the date
of its submission to the states by the Congress."

According to [ http://www.usconstitution.net/constamrat.html#Am22 ],
the 22nd Amendment was ratified by the states on Feb 27, 1951.

So, to answer your question...

* A president may be ELECTED to a maximum of 2 four-year terms. Those
terms may be consecutive (one immediately after the other), or
non-consecutive (*not* one right after the other). Therefore, Clinton
would not be permitted to run for President again.

* Any one person may serve as President for a maximum of 10 years. The
extra two years would happen if a President died in office (or was
impeached, or resigned, ...) more than 2 years after the start of his
term. In this case, the Vice President could become President for the
remainder of that term, but would still be allowed to run for
President twice and be elected twice.

* If a President is removed from office less than two years into his
term, then the person who replaces him would only be allowed to run
for one more term if that person remained in the office for a day more
than 2 years of his original term.

Search Strategy:

constitutional + amendments
[ ://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=constitutional+amendments&btnG=Google+Search
]


I hope this helps!

/ephraim

Thanks, i won the bet. Iknew i was right but had to prove it in writing.

:) What if President Clinton was chosen as Vice President? :) And by
some strange circumstance the President was no longer in office ...

Sorry, ... just making a bit of trouble.. :)

crythias-ga:  In my totally non-legal opinion, I think the operative
word is "elected".  If Bill was VP, and POTUS left office, he would be
a "successor" and "appointed" to the office.  But he could not run for
re-election at the end of his term.

Crythias --

The 22nd Amendment doesn't say anything about becoming a VP after 2
terms in office as President, but I suspect that the court system
would not look highly upon an ex-President becoming VP after two terms
of President. Otherwise, what would stop a determined person from
asking their friend to run as President and resign after only 1 day in
office? I'm pretty sure that the court would view any attempt to use
that loophole as unconstitutional.

IANAL. YMMV.

/ephraim

You cannot be Vice President elected or otherwise if you cannot meet
the qualifications to be President. Hence, Clinton cannot be VP or
again become President under any circumstances outside a
constitutional amendment.