# Why did FDR run for a fourth term?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-fdr-run-for-a-fourth-term/651528>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 27, 2013, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-fdr-run-for-a-fourth-term/651528 "2013-02-27T16:35:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\
**Post date:** [March 5, 2013, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-fdr-run-for-a-fourth-term/651528/41 "2013-03-05T17:19:34Z")

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> [@UncaStuart](#):
>
> It might have to do with your location. Here in California, “Jap” has been frowned on for at least 40 years.

Who was it who got in trouble during the Wategate hearings for referring to Sen. Inouye as “the little jap”?

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**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\
**Post date:** [March 5, 2013, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-fdr-run-for-a-fourth-term/651528/42 "2013-03-05T21:13:43Z")

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> [@Great\_Antibob](#):
>
> …That’s in contrast to Strom Thurmond, who had a whole staff around to tell him how to vote at the end and was essentially useless for his last couple decades.

I knew a former Republican U.S. Senate staffer in the Nineties who told me that, near the end, a Thurmond staffer would literally stand behind the senator, turn him by the shoulders, and give him a little nudge so that he’d know to go tottering in that direction. Yikes.

> [@ekedolphin](#):
>
> …When he became president, Truman swiftly helped push the National Security Act of 1947 through Congress…

Two years ain’t exactly “swiftly,” and Congress generally got stuff done a lot faster back then.

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**Author:** ![Sternvogel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)\
**Post date:** [March 6, 2013, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-fdr-run-for-a-fourth-term/651528/43 "2013-03-06T01:59:30Z")

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> [@md2000](#):
>
> Who was it who got in trouble during the Wategate hearings for referring to Sen. Inouye as “the little jap”?

From the second paragraph of [this obituary:](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/18/daniel-inouye)

> [@](#):
>
> At the Watergate hearings in 1973, [Inouye’]s aside about President Richard Nixon’s aide John Ehrlichman – “What a liar” – was famously caught by a microphone he had believed to be off. Ehrlichman’s lawyer, John Wilson, later called Inouye a “little Jap”, prompting a groundswell of support for the Senator.

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