Jon Christian Ryter -- Why Hillary Can't be President, Part 1

WHY HILLARY CAN'T BE PRESIDENT
PART 1 of 2

By Jon Christian Ryter

February 16, 2008

NewsWithViews.com

Even before his term of office expired at noon on January 20, 2001, President William Jefferson Clinton was quietly querying friendly members of the U.S. Supreme Court to see if they would be inclined to rule that the 22nd Amendment prevented a president from serving more than two terms in the White House, or if there might be five justices on the high court who could be legally persuaded that the 22nd Amendment didn't exclude the president from serving more than two terms, only that it prevented him from serving more than two consecutive terms. If the Justices could be convinced to frame a ruling based on what Clinton believed was "the spirit" in which the 22nd Amendment was offered for ratification rather than the high court adhering to the letter of the language within the amendment, Clinton might have been able to return to the presidential political arena in 2004 and challenge the son of his old nemesis. However, the consensus Clinton sought from the justices of the high court escaped him. It was the view of the US Supreme Court that the 22nd Amendment was clear and unambiguous. No man could hold the office of President for more than two terms. And, any president serving two years and one day of the unexpired term of a former president was ineligible to seek reelection at all.

There had been idle chatter in Democratic circles in 2004 that Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry might offer the vice presidential slot to Bill Clinton�even though Hillary tried hard to buy it for herself. However, the 22nd Amendment prevented Bill Clinton from being placed on the ticket as Kerry's vice presidential running mate just as Article II of the Constitution prevents Hillary Clinton from constitutionally assuming for the job. In fact, for precisely the same reason that Bill Clinton couldn't serve as vice president, neither can Hillary.

Why? Because she couldn't constitutionally fill the vacancy caused by the death, resignation, impeachment and removal of any US president under whom she served. The Constitution of the United States actually prevents Hillary�or any woman for that matter�from ascending to the office of President even though several women have already run for the office.

The first woman to run for President of the United States was Victoria Woodhull, a stockbroker and "prot�g�" of railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt. Woodhull ran for President on the Equal Rights Party ticket in 1872. Belva Lockwood, the first woman admitted to practice law before the US Supreme Court became that party's candidate for president in 1884 and 1888. Both women ran on a platform for which there was no constituency that would vote for them�not even themselves. Neither woman could vote. Womanhood did not get the vote until the ratification of the 19th Amendment on Aug. 18, 1920. While the 19th Amendment provided women with the right to vote, it did not provide them the right to seek the highest office in the land�a legality that has been overlooked by office seekers, male and female, since 1920.

In 1964 US Senator Margaret Chase Smith [R-ME] became the first woman to have her name placed in nominattion for President by a major political party. Smith was nominated by Sen. George Aiken that year. The nomination went to Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater who lost in the general election to President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Because women were not viable candidates for the office of the President, their candidacy was viewed only as evidence that the party hierarchy, whether Democrat or Republican, was solidly behind women's suffrage�particularly when the National Organization of Women [NOW] became a strong feminist advocacy voice in American politics in the 1960s.

In 1984, pressured by NOW to place a woman on the ticket, Walter "Fritz" Mondale (who was running against Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush) selected Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro [D-NY] as his running mate. Although Mondale and Ferraro lost in the biggest election upset since 1820 when John Quincy Adams won only one electoral vote in his fight to win the presidency from James Madison, Ferraro has the distinction of going into the history books as the first female vice presidential nominee of a major political party.

Mondale entered the history books as the man who won only his home State of Minnesota�and its 13 electoral votes�in the Election of 1984. Had Mondale won the election, a Constitutional crisis would have resulted since Ferraro could not have legally succeeded Mondale if he died in office or otherwise became incapacitated without a clarification from the US Supreme Court, or through a constitutional amendment that erases the gender distinctions in Article II, Section 1. In an interesting side note to Ferraro's candidacy in 1984, the Republicans captured 57% of all of the female votes that year. It seems that, other than the diehard party loyalists and feminists, not even the working class women of America wanted a woman anywhere near the White House�except as First Lady.

Few Americans are cognizant of the fact that an important legal question exists that has not been constitutionally addressed. They believe that because that because the 19th Amendment ives women the right to vote, and because women serve in Congress that the office of President of the United States has been degenderized. Not true. The 19th Amendment merely remvoed the barriers that prevented women from voting�not holding the highest office in the land. The 19th Amendment says: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." Had the amendment said, "...the right of citizens of the United States to vote or hold public office shall not be denied..." then the 19th Amendment would have done what the feminists claim it did�degenderize the office of the President of the United States. But, they didn't. And, it didn't.

The Susan B. Anthony Amendment (as it was known) passed in the House by a vote of 304 to 89. (It was called the Susan B. Anthony Amendment because the words were actually drafted by the suffragist in 1875 when she tried to get Congress to at least debate the measure. The Senate passed the amendment resolution on a vote of 56 to 25. (Fifty-six Senate Republicans and 20 Democrats voted for passage of the Amendment.) Both the House and Senate deliberately avoided adding language that would allow women the right to seek the highest office in the land because most Senators on both sides of the aisle were in doubt of the Amendment being ratified by the 36 States needed to make it the law of the land. Thus, we can conclude that the language needed to give women the right to seek the highest office of the land was deliberately missing from the debates in the 67th Congress since the Congressmen and Senators knew the 19th Amendment would not have been ratified if such a position was incldued.

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Today's feminists beleive the election process is evolutionary�legalized by common practice. They are convinced that because most Americans believe that someday a woman will be President, together with the fact that women have run�unchallenged in the courts�for the office, the male-gendered presidential office has been neutered without the need of a ruling from the Supreme Court or a constitutional amendment. For part two click below.

Click here for part -----> 2,