Last summer I wrote about the prospects of President Bush nominating himself to serve on the Supreme Court. There’s a limited time left for his governing term, and with a lifetime appointment, it seems like a pretty good gig.

In today’s Washington Post, there’s an article about a former president skirting around normal Constitutional thinking and getting back into the White House. That president is William Jefferson Clinton. You might know him as Bill.

The plan works out like this: Bill runs as vice president on someone’s ticket (Post had him naturally with Hillary, though I think Gore/Clinton would be far more interesting). The 12th Amendment says you can’t be vice president if you aren’t eligible to be president. The 22nd Amendment says you can’t be elected president more than twice.

But as the Post points out through interviews with former White House lawyers, Clinton wouldn’t be elected president. He would ascend to the presidency, thus making a third term for him legal, even though a fourth would be out of the question because of the necessity for reelection.

I was totally with them at this point and ready to start printing campaign flyers for Candidate X/Clinton ’08.

Until I ran into my old buddy Richard Posner. Judge Posner sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals and was the subject of a research paper when I was in grad school.

He’s also the man responsible for crushing my dreams. He says in the Post, “Electing a vice president means electing a vice president and contingently electing him as president,” which would prohibit Clinton from making such a run.

Maybe Clinton is getting bored these days and will try to stir things up. After all, if he can get a Gore/Clinton ticket going and manage to get elected, the Supreme Court would once again be asked to make a huge ruling involving the presidency. Imagine the legal arguments raining down from both sides as former justices, White House lawyers, Ally McBeal and someone with a powdered wig weigh in on cable news shows. University classes will grind to a halt as students debate the merits of each side…and then have to write a 20-page paper defending their position.

Did I mention I have the Constitution on my iPod?