The fact that President Joe Biden fell while walking across the stage after giving a speech at the Air Force Academy on Thursday will undoubtedly play a big role in advertisements run by the Republican party with the intention of reinforcing the concept that Biden is too elderly and feeble to serve as president for another four years. The unpopularity of the vice president, Kamala Harris, only makes matters worse for his chance of reelection.
An opinion columnist for The Messenger, Philip Allen Lacovara, believes the answer to Biden’s presidential plans for four more years is Barack Obama.
“To bolster his chances for reelection, Biden needs to engage in some out-of-the-box creativity,” Lacovara said. “Biden might rescue his faltering hope of reelection in one seemingly impossible way — asking the highly popular, former President Barack Obama to step in to replace Harris on the 2024 ticket.”
The preposterous notion was previously proposed in 2015 in a report by The Washington Post. Before the Obama-Biden administration had even come to an end there was discussion about a similar ticket.
However, there’s one major issue with this, in that a former president who has served two terms is constitutionally barred from running as a candidate on a presidential ticket. The 22nd Amendment restricts a candidate from being elected to the presidency for more than two terms. The 12th Amendment dictates that a vice president can not be selected if they are not eligible for president. The vice president takes the role as the president, should the president resign or die while in office, which is not possible for Obama to do based on the 22nd Amendment since he’s already served the maximum of two years in office.
Lacovara believes there’s a solution to this.
The author explains how, despite the 22nd Amendment, this could happen. Regardless of the unlikelihood of this being the Democrat’s dream team, with Obama being the Vice President in name only and in actuality calling the shots as the commander-in-chief, the author believes that “both Biden and Obama owe it to the country to consider using it.”
“While Obama is precluded from ever running again for election as president, the amendment does not prohibit him from running for any other office, including vice president,” Lacovara stated. “Nor does the last sentence of the 12th Amendment disqualify him. It stipulates that ‘no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States’ (emphasis added). For several reasons, this requirement does not expand Obama’s inability under the 22nd Amendment to run for election as president.”
Technicalities aside, the author believes that replacing Kamala Harris with Obama is possibly Biden’s only chance at a second term which would also be for the betterment of the country.
“Biden continues to sink in the polls, with a recent Washington Post/ABC poll showing him actually behind Donald Trump, something considered almost unthinkable even before Trump’s indictment in New York three months ago. Biden has two crucial but connected problems — his age and his vice president. Harris’s unpopularity compounds voters’ concerns about Biden’s stamina and even his survival through a new term.
Since Biden shows no sign of willingness to step aside himself, both his low approval ratings and the danger to the country from Trump’s potential return to the White House make it imperative that Biden select a running mate who best enhances his chances for reelection. Obama is the only person who could practically guarantee Biden’s reelection, whose qualifications cannot be disputed, and who could replace Harris without alienating a major constituency.
While the idea of Obama running as Biden’s vice president would, at first, not appeal to either of them, their concern for the good of the country suggests that they should carefully consider this course. When Biden agreed to sign on as Obama’s vice-presidential running mate in 2008, Biden was the veteran with decades of service in the Senate, including chairmanships of both the judiciary and the foreign affairs committees. By contrast, Obama was a junior senator in his first term. But Biden took the subordinate slot. Now, turn-about should be fair play, and Obama should be willing to run in second place along with the incumbent president. Their prior relationship should enable them to come to an acceptable understanding about significant responsibilities for Obama as vice-president.
Faced with the prospect of a career-ending defeat partly of her own making, Harris should accept Obama’s selection, especially if she is assured of some significant post in the new administration, giving her additional time and opportunity to burnish her credentials.”
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