Easier Said Than Done

I have never been one to believe in conspiracy theories.  I never believed that President Bush ordered an attack on the World Trade Center to push an agenda of war.  I was never a believer of President Obama's birth certificate conspiracy and I truly believe that rapper Tupac Shakur died on the streets of Vegas, although he has released more songs dead than alive.  So when during the final weeks of the election and the weeks following people were telling me that President Obama was positioning himself to repeal the 22nd Amendment eliminating Presidential term limits and becoming "President for Life".  I truly believe that is not the case.

Now do I think the President is narcissistic enough to believe he can pull this off, I do.  Do I think he is dumb enough to try, I don't. The reason this has caught my attention is that last week Rep. Jose' Serrano (D-NY) proposed a House Joint Resolution to committee for the repealing of the 22nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.  Such a repeal would eliminate the two term limit for President of the United States.  However, the repeal still would not institute a "President of Life" because the law would still require elections every four years.

Needless to say, this report got my wife in an uproar first thing on a Monday morning.  As I said from the beginning of me hearing this, not only would it not get done, it's just not that easy.  So President Obama is smart enough to know that he would not benefit from such a proposal because, even if by chance the Amendment was repealed, he would be long gone from office and would have to run a campaign again to be elected.  That's if it gets repealed, which I will repeat, it won't.

Given the current status of affairs in Washington no Amendment will ever get repealed because the numbers just aren't there, and that's just to get it out of Washington.  Neither the House nor the Senate have the majority in which to repeal or amend the constitution which is two thirds.  As we have seen over the past few weeks the only way a two thirds majority can be achieved is if votes are bought on the proposed bill.  Since there should be no appropriations attached to such a bill, votes should not be able to be bought.  However, crazier things have happened.

So for argument sake, let’s say by some miracle this gets through the House and the Senate it would need just as big of a miracle to get through the states.  Three-fourths of the states would need to approve/ratify the bill for it to become into law and they have seven years to do so.  So not only is math not on the President's side, but time isn't either.  Let's take this past election as an example as why the states don't approve.  If you crunch the numbers where they matter, which is the popular count, the race was closer than it looked.  The President won the Electoral Map in a landslide but constitutional amendments are not decided by the Electoral College, just the presidency.  In picking up the 332 electoral votes the President only carried 27 states, that's just more than half, or if you ask the President, it's exactly half.  A far cry from the 38 (37.5) needed for ratification.  The states can completely ignore the ratification making it null in void, as was the case during the 1970's with the Equal Rights Amendment. 

It is very unlikely that this is on the President's agenda, however, if there is a President that could sell it, it's President Obama.  I don't take much stock in the proposal from Rep. Serrano since this is the 9th time he has proposed this exact bill and it has never made it out of committee.  There have been more proposal's to abolish Presidential term limits than to repeal the Second Amendment, which seems to be the hot topic these days.  In the end Presidential term limits will continue without issue as I believe that every President wouldn't want the job more than eight years anyway.  Now if there was a bill proposal to put term limits on Congress and Senate, I would definitely support that.

3D
If you don't take it from me, ask my wife.