chach wrote:Not to get too far off track, but technically speaking a person can serve as president for three terms or twelve years if they were elected vice president and assumed the role of president through succession (president dies, VP becomes president) for the first term. As they were not directly elected to the position of president they'd still be eligible for another two terms.
Not to get too much further off track, but the maximum number of years that any one person can serve as President is 10 years. If an individual serves more than two years of a term left vacant by his/her predecessor, he/she can only run for one additional election cycle.
Also, an individual is not eligible to run for Vice-President if they are not otherwise eligible to be President, so you can't sneak in by serving eight years, then running for VP and then have the President resign or otherwise vacate the Presidency. (This point is debated, however, and has never been ruled upon by the courts.) A quick overview is available on Wikipedia here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-sec ... nstitution.