Wondering Wind:
Here's the clause:
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
I have always assumed that it means the fourteen years immediately preceding the person's accession to the Presidency.
Residency is probably construed to mean having a place to call home. The last President who spent much time outside the country prior to being elected would have been Ike, who spent several years outside the US between 1942 and 1945, but I'm sure he maintained a residence and presumably voter registration during the period. He owned a big old farm outside Gettysburg, which I think he'd had for twenty or thirty years. I would find it very hard to believe that military service outside the US would constitute a break in the continuous 14-year period. If that were the case, a President could ruin the prospect of potential military rivals by shipping them off to Timbuktu.
Hoover spent quite a bit of time outside the US prior to his presidency, but I'd be willing to bet he maintained a residence. In his case, though, the absence from the country would have been on his own volition, so he would have come closer to having a problem than would have Eisenhower.
Curiously, had Clinton resided outside the US during the period prior to 1992, he might have come under some scrutiny with respect to this clause. So far as I know Bill and Hillary never owned a house until they bought Carpetbagger-on-Hudson shortly before the 2000 election so if he'd resided overseas there might have been a challenge.
Note also that Madeline Albright, while Secretary of State, was not technically close in line to the Presidency after the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate. Since she was not a natural-born citizen she was ineligible to succeed to the Presidency, so hmmm I guess the Secretary of the Treasury would have been third. The pecking order inside the Cabinet goes by the holder of the oldest Cabinet post, and SecState was the first one created by the Congress in 1789. Either Treasury or Justice would have been next, and without looking it up I'd guess Treasury.
TEd, who has spent a good deal of time wondering about and researching the Constitution
