President Trump has been hinting about running for a third term. This would violate the 22nd Amendment.
The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, states that:
“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”
First things first. I suggest that everyone stop worrying about a third Trump term. Donald Trump will be 82 in 2028. Octogenarian status has proven to be a barrier for US presidential candidates, including the frail Joe Biden, and including Bernie Sanders, who is still quite hale and alert at 83. A recent poll showed that only 45 percent of Republicans would welcome a third Trump term, even if it were possible.
But let’s get back to this issue of the 22nd Amendment. The 22nd Amendment was a response to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s historic and unprecedented four terms in office. FDR was in the White House from 1933 until his death in 1945. FDR was the only president my maternal grandparents (born in 1921 and 1922) knew during their formative years.
FDR’s long period in office can be attributed to several factors: a weak Republican bench in that era, and the consecutive crises of the Great Depression and World War II. We must also conclude that he was popular and had a certain fan base. My maternal grandparents always spoke fondly of him, and he made them both into lifelong Democrats.
The 22nd Amendment was a mostly Republican project, championed by GOP congressmen like Robert A. Taft and Earl C. Michener. The Republicans of the immediate postwar era feared a second coming of FDR, perhaps.
But is there any good reason why a popular and successful man or woman should not be able to run for a third—or even fourth—term?
No such limit is placed on members of Congress. Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts has been in Congress since 1977. To put that in perspective: I was nine years old and in the fourth grade when Markey began his congressional career. Later this year I will turn 57.
We are comfortable with congresspersons having half-century careers (Ed Markey is not alone in his congressional longevity), but we fear the third presidential term as a sign of looming dictatorship?
If a president can win a third term, then why not? A younger version of Ronald Reagan could easily have won reelection in 1988. Likewise, it is not unreasonable to speculate that Barack Obama could have won reelection to a third term in 2016. For you Democrats out there: Trump squeaked out a narrow Electoral College victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016. How would he have fared against the incumbent President Obama?
In modern times, it is rare for either party to hold the White House for three consecutive terms, even when they run new candidates. It has only happened once in my lifetime: when George H.W. Bush won the White House after serving as Ronald Reagan’s vice president for eight years.
During my lifetime, the one-term president has been the much more consistent outcome: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Joe Biden all failed to win a second term. (Note: Ford entered the Oval Office in the aftermath of Watergate, and had less than a full term in office. Kamala Harris ran as Joe Biden’s party-appointed proxy.)
His age aside, by 2028, Donald Trump will have been either a president or a presidential candidate for 13 years. Trump fatigue will have set in long before then. (If this business with the tariffs does not go well, Trump fatigue will afflict the deep-red sectors of the country long before 2028.)
A third Trump term strikes me as highly unlikely, even without the impediment of the 22nd Amendment. But a tenable case can be made for reconsidering the 22nd Amendment, nonetheless.
-ET