But Obama is NOT “Constitutionally ineligible to the office of President” (dismissing for the sake of this discussion only his NBC status).
He is 35 years old. He has resided in the US for the past 14 years. And he was accepted as NBC by both major parties and the Chief Justice of the United States in 2009.
The XX Amendment says NOTHING about eligibility to the office. It says he can’t be ELECTED to the office of President. It says it twice. It does not mention the Vice Presidency - at all.
It would have been simple to draft an amendment that said, “Amendment XII is henceforth modified as follows: No person having served more than 731 days in the office of President shall be further eligible to the office, following the completion of his most recent term of service”.
But that’s not what Congress did, and that’s not what the states ratified.
Do you mean the 22nd amendment?
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.
Why are you taking each amendment in isolation and acting as if nothing else in the Constitution exists?
The 22nd amendment says the President cannot be elected more than twice. The 12th amendment says the eligibility for President also applies to the Vice-President. Therefore, nobody elected twice as President can be Vice-President.
If we're going to play your game, then we should ignore Article 2 because the 22nd amendment only says the President can't be elected more than twice. Therefore, anyone of any age, residency, and citizenship can run for President because the 22nd amendment says nothing about that, only the number of times elected.
-PJ