Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution
As worded, the primary focus of the 22nd Amendment is on limiting individuals twice elected to the presidency from being elected again. Due to this, several issues could be raised regarding the amendment's meaning and application, especially in relation to the 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804, which states, "But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States". While it is clear that under the 12th Amendment the original constitutional qualifications of age, citizenship, and residency apply to both the president and vice president, it is unclear whether someone who is ineligible to be elected president could be elected vice president. Because of this apparent ambiguity, there may be a loophole in the 22nd Amendment whereby a two-term former-president could be elected vice president and then succeed to the presidency as a result of the incumbent's death, resignation, or removal from office (or even succeed to the presidency from some other stated office in the presidential line of succession).
Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower
In January 1953, Senator John W. Bricker of Ohio re-introduced the Bricker Amendment, which would limit the president's treaty making power and ability to enter into executive agreements with foreign nations. Fears that the steady stream of post-World War II-era international treaties, pacts, covenants, and executive agreements entered into by the U.S. government were supplanting the U.S. Constitution as the supreme law of the land, and undermining the nation's sovereignty, united isolationists, conservative Democrats, most Republicans, along with numerous professional groups and civic organizations behind the amendment. Eisenhower opposed the amendment, believing that it would weaken the president and would hamper the handling of the nation's foreign affairs to such a degree, that it would be impossible for the U.S. to exercise leadership on the global stage. Eisenhower worked with Senate Minority Lyndon B. Johnson to defeat the amendment. Although the amendment started out with 56 co-sponsors, it went down to defeat in the U.S. Senate in 1954, with a 42-50 vote. Later in 1954, a watered-down version of the amendment missed the required two-thirds majority in the Senate by one vote. This episode proved to be the last hurrah for the isolationist Republicans, as younger conservatives increasingly turned to an internationalism based on aggressive anti-communism, typified by Senator Barry Goldwater.