Each night before I go to bed, I give thanks for these 14 words: "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice." Seriously, I kid. But in case you don't recognize it, that's the gist of the 22nd Amendment. There's more, but thanks to George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the fear of kings and the 80th Congress, George Bush will not be elected to a third term.
The "tradition" of the two-terms-and-you're-out president - prior to FDR - is steeped in both myth and history. It has been said that Washington politely demurred when he was asked to consider a third term. The "tradition" thus became that if three terms were too good for the Father of Our Country, then they were too good for all lesser mortals.
Truth be told, Washington never wanted a second term, let alone a third one. He wanted nothing more than to retire to Mount Vernon, which he did upon John Adams' inauguration and where he died less than three years later on December 14, 1799. In other words, he likely would not have survived a third term; the first two were too hard. Nation building, followed by nation preserving - not to mention eight years of revolution - will do that to a guy.
It's also been said that when Thomas Jefferson was being beseeched to consider a third term in early 1807, he cited Washington as indelible precedent. "[H]e was reported to have told a senator that he regarded the precedent of George Washington as obligatory and that he himself had consistently favored rotation in public office."1 At the same time, Jefferson was writing his daughter and others, principally John Dickinson, that he looked forward to retirement. "I am tired of an office where I can do no more good than many others, who would be glad to be employed in it," Jefferson wrote to Dickinson. "To myself, personally, it brings nothing but unceasing drudgery and daily loss of friends."2 Like Washington, eight years had been more than enough for the Sage from Monticello.
The history of the four-year term itself, of course, dates back to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. In the initial debates, suggestions for the executive's term of office ranged from three years with a right of re-election to seven years "without re-eligibility." There was a proposal for a three-year term with a possibility of up to three terms. In voting on the Virginia Plan in late May, the delegates narrowly approved one seven-year term.3
In July, they were all over the map. On July 26, George Mason officially proposed election of an executive by the legislature for a seven-year term, with no chance for a second term, and who was impeachable. The Committee of the Whole passed Mason's motion 6-3, from where it went to the Committee of Detail, whose draft presented to the convention on August 6 called for a "President of the United States" who would be elected by the legislature for a term of seven years, but "not be elected a second time." And, by the way, "his title shall be ÔHis Excellency.'"4
In the end, the delegates decided on:
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected as follows 5
So mighty was the tussle over the popular ballot and the Electoral College,6 the sources in my home library are silent on why and how the convention came forth with this solution. Perhaps the delegates were tired and they just wanted to go home.7 More likely, Article II, Section 1 struck the glorious compromise that makes up so much of our Constitution. Four years must have seemed right for a President who would be popularly elected, could be elected more than once, and was subject to impeachment by Congress.8 More than three, less than seven; good enough. Let's go home. Amazingly, like much of the Constitution, it works.
Three years after the nation's sesquicentennial, the Constitution and the ghost of Washington were tested. Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected in landslides in 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression and in 1936 as the nation emerged in great thanks to FDR's New Deal. However, while Roosevelt did not actively seek a third term, he was more willing to accept one than were Washington and Jefferson.
Roosevelt, who did not appear at the Democratic convention, forwarded a statement to the convention that he "has never had, and has not today, any desire or purpose to continue in the office of President, to be a candidate for that office, or to be nominated by the Convention for that office." Not surprisingly, he still was nominated.
FDR accepted the nomination with characteristic aplomb in a radio address the following day. Given the circumstances at home and abroad, Roosevelt - despite his individual desire for retirement - said he could not "call on men and women to serve their country or to train themselves to serve and, at the same time, decline to serve my country in my own personal capacity, if I am called upon to do so by the people of my country." If such a draft should be made upon me, I say to you, in the utmost simplicity, I will, with God's help, continue to serve with the best of my ability and with the fullness of my strength.9"
Perhaps "tradition" meant something to the electorate, because Roosevelt did not enjoy the landslides of the past. He defeated Wendell Wilkie, 27,313,041/449 to 22,348,480/82, versus his 1936 knockout of Alf Landon: 27,757,333/523 to 16,684,231/8. Still, a fourth term was almost perfunctory, with the country embedded in WWII in 1944, although Thomas Dewey put up a better fight than Wilkie. Three months after his fourth inauguration, FDR was dead.
Less than two years later, Congress took up the question of the 22nd Amendment. Details of Congress's motivation and debate do not take up pages in historical texts, but an entry in the Congressional Record speaks volumes:
By reason of the lack of a positive expression upon the subject of the tenure of the office of President, and by reason of a well-defined custom which has risen in the past that no President should have more than two terms in that office, much discussion has resulted upon this subject. Hence it is the purpose of this . . . [proposal] . . . to submit this question to the people so they, by and through the recognized processes, may express their views upon this question, and if they shall so elect, they may . . . thereby set at rest this problem.10
Specifically excepting President Truman from its provisions, the 22nd Amendment passed Congress on March 21, 1947. By the end of May, half of the required 36 states had expressed their views and ratified the amendment. Momentum did not pick up again until January and February 1951 - perhaps it was the setbacks in Korea and new legislatures in many states - during which 12 more states ratified, with Minnesota putting things over the top on February 27. Five more states ratified after that; Washington never did.
Just in case, though, now might be a good time. Still, thanks to the 22nd Amendment, we can safely say: Fool less than half of us once, shame on you. Fool a little more than half of us again, shame on them. Fool us É oh, wait É we can't get fooled again. n
1 Dumas Malone, Jefferson the President, Second Term, 1805-1809 at 169 (Little Brown & Co. 1974).
2 Id.
3 Page Smith, The Shaping of America: A People's History of the Young Republic at 66 (McGraw-Hill 1980).
4 Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier, Decision in Philadelphia: The Constitutional Convention of 1787 at 225 (Random House 1986).
5 U.S. Const., Art. II, Sec. 1. Much hand wringing over the Electoral College followed during the next 20 years. See U.S. Const., Am. XII.
6 See Collier at 226-27.
7 See id. at 226.
8 See id. at 221.
9 Franklin Roosevelt's Radio Address to the Democratic National Convention Accepting the Nomination, July 19, 1940, online source.
10 H.R. Rep. No. 17, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. 2 (1947).
