I don’t like the idea of limmiting people’s freedom to vote for whom they desire, but I’d rather stick with the current system than forbid two consecutive terms. That would make all presidents semi-lame duck executives.
I would, however, favor disallowing former first ladies to run for president, at least until Hillary is too old. Just kidding, of course. I’d actually LOVE to see her run, and the Dems might just be naive enough to nominate her.
I assumed that stypticus was proposing that the limit be two consecutive terms, so that a two-term president could run for a third term, but only after sitting at least one term out. I did not think that stypticus was proposing a total ban on consecutive terms.
Brian: Yes, I misread the OP.
True, but that’s irrelevant to the application of the 22nd Amendment:
Since Nixon was twice elected to the office of President, the 22nd barred him from seeking a third term, just like Eisenhower, Reagan and Clinton. The fact that he didn’t finish his second term didn’t make him eligible to run again.
I’m not sure if I made proper sense out of this. You stated that three of nine Presidents didn’t get elected to a second term. I count four (Kennedy, Ford, Carter, Bush I). I ommitted Johnson because, even though he was elected only once, he was elected to a “second” term since he served part of Kennedy’s.
I touched a bit on this question before, but maybe not thoroughly enough. Let’s say that Bill Clinton still had tremendous public support right now. He is still very young, so people would probably be counting on him being the Democratic nomination in 2004 if such remained true. Furthermore, his support could possibly be so overwhelming, it could undermine the current President’s authority and make his term a lame duck term since most people would be planning on voting Clinton back into office anyway.
That is why I don’t like the idea. That possibility just seems to plausible.
Ok…since we’re nitpicking, you were more wrong than I. In fact, I can see no error at all in what you posted.
As far as literal interpretations of what I posted, the fact that Nixon would have indeed been eligible for re-election had the 22nd Amendment been passed makes my statement partially wrong. I figured that most people would consider Nixon “ineligble” since, to paraphrase what you said, he did not finish his second term.
bjohn13, not being American I have little background in American politics. I searched for a list of presidents and counted those since 1951 (my web-searched Amendment 22 ratification date), and I took a number from a previous poster for the not-re-elected figure. Likely that last was wrong; I’ll believe you that it was four.
Which makes my case more strongly than three. Four out of nine is almost 50% of presidents since Amendment 22 not getting re-elected; how does that support the argument that incumbents are more likely to be re-elected?
Also, could you expand on why Clinton’s potential potential for re-election would make the current president’s term a lame duck? (Yes, two potentials.)
Okay, bjohn13 and stypticus, let’s keep the facts straight. The “number from a pevious poster” that stypticus is referring to was mine:
That statement is correct. But bjohn13 got to the number four by adding President Kennedy:
The 22nd amendment did not affect President Kennedy, who did not run for reelection because he was assassinated in office. The amendment likewise did not affect President L. Johnson because he did not run for another term, even though he was eligible.
Huh?
I am not sure what bjohn13 means by “Nixon would have indeed been eligible for re-election had the 22nd Amendment been passed” or by “most people would consider Nixon ‘ineligble.’” The fact is that the 22nd amendment did bar President Nixon from running for reelection.
To summarize:
The 22nd amendment has applied to ten presidents, beginning with President Eisenhower. The amendment barred four presidents (Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton) from running for reelection, even though they would have been eligible but for the amendment. Three presidents (Ford, Carter, Bush I) ran for reelection and lost, and thus never ran into the amendment’s bar, although they would have if they had been reelected. One president (L. Johnson) could have run for reelection, but did not do so–voluntarily, not because the amendment barred him. One president (Kennedy) died in office. One president (Bush II) is still serving and cannot yet be categorized in terms of how the amendment affects him.
Two inconsecutive terms would defeat the purpose; it would need to be unlimited just because if you need to get through a crisis and only one man or woman could do the job (the incumbent) then there would be four years of “settling” for another candidate; world war 2 and the great depression probably couldn’t be solved if FDR had needed to wait four more years to run again and he died just months after his fourth successful election; that means it would have been 4 years of some other person who might have just made everything worse and taken far longer fir FDR to recover it and probably couldn’t do it with 8 years, 4 year break then 8 more
Jerseyrules, the poster you’re responding to was banned almost eight years ago. If you want to discuss this topic, please open a new thread and link to this one.