President says he has not ruled out a third term, then a third tarmac press gaggle says he has, then a fourth says he hasn't again.

The Twenty-Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1951, says: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” That is the whole sentence. There is a comma. There are no asterisks. There is no provision for but actually three times and no provision for unless he really wants to. The Amendment is forty-six words long. The relevant clause is twenty-three words long. It has been in force for seventy-four years.

On Monday, on the way to Air Force One, the President answered a shouted question by saying he had ruled out running for vice president as a workaround, but had not ruled out a third presidential term. The exchange was on tape. The wire services moved it before the plane was wheels-up.

By Wednesday, on the tarmac in Gyeongju, South Korea, the President said he had ruled out a third term. He said it on camera. The wire services moved that one too.

On Friday afternoon, in Tokyo, the President suggested again that the situation was complicated and that lawyers were looking at it. The lawyers in question were not named. The Twenty-Second Amendment, in case you have forgotten, was still in force.

Hon. That is three positions in under seventy-two hours, on a question whose answer is forty-six words long, ratified in 1951, and not subject to lawyer-looking.

You ever notice how the people who say a question is being studied always seem to be studying a question the answer to which has been printed in every civics textbook for seven decades.

I have been a waitress for thirty years. I have heard a lot of men hedge. The hedging is almost always about a question they do not want to answer because the answer is the one they don’t want. No is a clean answer. Probably no is the answer of a man who is keeping a door cracked in case the wind changes.

The wind, in this story, is the Twenty-Second Amendment. The Amendment does not change with the wind. The Amendment has been the same all week.

The hedging is the answer.

That ought to concern you.