Monday, October 03, 2005

Thoughts on the 22nd Amendment

In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower became the first Republican elected President since 1928. In that time, Franklin Roosevelt had won four successive presidential elections, and the Republicans were determined never to have a repeat of that. The 22nd Amendment - which had been proposed in 1947, was ratified in 1951, in time for it to apply to Eisenhower. It reads, in part:

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 President more than once.

Ironically, two people have already slipped out of the second half - both Presidents Johnson and Ford served less than two years of their predecessor’s term and so were each eligible to be elected twice themselves. Johnson got one, and Ford none, but in theory Gerald Ford could have been President for very close to a decade.

The idea of the “Imperial Presidency” took root in Roosevelt’s day and blossomed in Nixon’s. The notion that the nation’s chief executive needed to be limited fixed in the imagination in the way the imperial overreach of the legislature or the judiciary never has. And so we have a peculiar situation where every second term President has been hobbled to one degree or another.

Glossing over Eisenhower, who had the good fortune to be President in quieter times, there are four Presidents of interest: Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush 43.  Nixon’s second term was filled with the acrimonious national mood over Vietnam and Watergate. A third-rate burglary in which the President was only peripherally involved at best grew into a national scandal the likes of which had not been seen before or since. Nixon’s enemies knew they had him, and they knew his power was lessened by his inability to run again. Someone else would be President in January of 1977, and thus Nixon’s ability to reward, protect, or punish diminished with each passing day.  Weakened, he was unable to do anything but resign.

Reagan’s second term was similarly a time of slowing down, especially by 1987 when Democrats in Congress conducted the partisan Iran-Contra hearings. They did not achieve their aim of doing in a second Republican President, but the fact that Ronnie would be riding out of town in a few years enabled the whole farce to get off the ground in the first place. Such would have been politically impossible in a first term.  Same for Clinton. Like Nixon, his ‘crime’ was not the act itself but the clumsy attempt to cover it up afterwards. Clinton’s impeachment in 1998 - ostensibly about sex or lies depending on which side of the political divide you are - was really about the Republicans foolishly playing the same political gotcha game the Democrats had previously tried on Nixon and Reagan. They failed as the Democrats did with Reagan, partly on the flimsiness of the charges and partly on the personal populatity of Clinton himself. But it remains that it was Clinton’s inability to maneuver in his second term due to the fact that he would be gone shortly regardless that allowed it to happen at all. How would Clinton be able to punish those who impeached him?

Which brings us to the current President Bush. Reelected less than a year ago, pundits on both the right and the left are all but declaring his presidency over. Point to what you want - posturing Democrats in Congress, witch hunts against Tom DeLay and Bill Frist, nominee wrangling, hurricane finger-pointing, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, gas prices, education, healthcare, cats vs. dogs, it’s all Bush’s fault. Polls show that this is the lowest point of the Bush presidency and no wonder what with the relentless hammering away at him. Why? Because there is no Democratic majority in Congress to run sham impeachment trials or even shammer hearings. But it will take its toll nevertheless as everyone knows there will be a new President come January 2009 and no one wants to wait. Inexorably, though some 80% of his term of office remains, Bush will be relegated to the sidelines. Reagan very likely could have had a third term, and so probably would Clinton, but the Constitutional prohibition made them the proverbial “lame ducks” and forced them to defend themselves rather than concentrate fully on the job the people elected them to do.

This is what the 22nd Amendment has wrought. Presidents who achieve second terms spend most of them fighting irrelevancy and the baying pack at their heels. We may want to rethink the whole thing and repeal it.

Posted by Matt on 10/03 at 12:10 PM
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