Can Kamala Harris pick Barack Obama as U.S. Vice President nominee for 2024?

As citizens of the United States ponder their choices a few months before heading to the polls for the presidential elections this November, the Democratic party has a couple of huge decisions to make much sooner. When incumbent president Joe Biden announced that he would not be running again, quickly endorsing his Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him, the generally negative mood around the camp lightened.

With a young, articulate candidate now likely to lead the ticket, one who has a hugely successful career as a prosecutor and attorney general behind her, rival Donald Trump and his newly appointed Republican VP will need to revise their ‘look at the old man over there’ tactics.

Although not confirmed as the Democratic nominee, everything does point to it happening in the coming weeks, and already Americans are wondering who Harris will add to her own ticket. One name that has cropped up is that of former US President Barack Obama, but how likely is that really?

For those keen to see the two-term president back in the running, the answer is that his chances of being made VP are very low.

How many terms can a US president serve?

First things first. Let’s take a look at the guidance over a president serving more that two terms. This is directly linked to the vice president conversation.

In the United States, the presidency operates under a framework of rules and traditions intended to uphold a stable and democratic system of governance. One key rule is the restriction that bars a president who has already completed two terms from running for office again, which originated in the early days of the republic.

George Washington, the nation’s first president, established a crucial precedent by voluntarily stepping down after his second term in 1797. Washington’s decision was motivated by a desire to prevent the accumulation of power in one person. It’s important to note, as most recently witnessed by Donald Trump’s nomination, that these two terms do not have to be consecutive. Franklin D. Roosevelt, is the only president to have broken with this tradition, being elected to four terms in office (1933-1945) during the Great Depression and World War II.

What does the US Constitutional say about term limits?

After Roosevelt’s crises-driven, four-term presidency, in 1947 the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution was proposed by Congress, and ratified four years later. Here’s what it says:

“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.”

Can a former president be a vice president?

So, the above text answers the question about presidents going for additional terms (apart from a possible legal loophole) but what about coming back as VP instead? For this we turn back to the 12th Amendment, which says that “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”

So, for anyone hoping to see a Harris-Obama 2024 ticket, that’s very unlikely to happen without a rather complex trip to the Supreme Court. Unless, of course, Michelle changes her mind.

Has a former U.S. President ever run for Vice President?

No, is the simple answer. If Obama were to win the nomination for Harris’ VP then this would be the first time in the country’s history. Some more likely names that could join her are California’s Gavin Newsom, Kentucky’s Andy Beshear, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois’JB Pritzker, North Carolina’s Roy Cooper, or Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, all still potentially in the running for the nomination themselves.