PERSPECTIVES: The 22nd Amendment Revisited

Above, Roosevelt pilloried....

By James C. Johnston Jr.

Back in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s the Twenty-Second Amendment to the United States Constitution was seen as necessary for the preservation of the freedom of the country and to protect us as a nation from a possible dictator who might capture the heart and soul of the American Nation and run for president forever. Exactly who thought that back in 1950? It was a combination of people including: Republicans and Southern Conservative Democrats, and even Liberal Populists. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had won four terms in a row as President of the United States in the quadrennial elections for President from 1932 to 1944, most likely would have been a shoe-in for succeeding himself in presidential office for many decades to come had he been in better health. Only death could remove him from future contests.

The Conservative Establishment of this nation, and a significant number of Moderates and Liberals too, could see the peril of having a future dangerous demagogue becoming President-for-life if term limitations for this nation’s highest office were not imposed. Franklin Roosevelt was to all appearances an irresistible force of nature who dared anything to get the job of getting this country on the road to recovery and out of the catastrophe of the “Great Depression” done. Roosevelt did everything that came to mind to resolve the national crisis that followed the economic melt-down which followed the great stock market crash of 1929 and the economic disaster which followed.

Herbert Clark Hoover, a very kind and generally capable man in less ordinary time who fed both Europe and Russia through his great organizational abilities during and after the horrors of World War I and the Russian Revolution which followed it.  Yet Hoover was unable to take the huge chances and try greatly innovative programs that Roosevelt was willing to try to alleviate the pain of the Depression Years. Hence in the Election of 1932, Roosevelt won a landslide victory over Hoover and his failed policies which resulted in Hoover’s name becoming attached to hopeless villages of the homeless constructed in municipal dumps called “Hoovervilles”.

Many of Roosevelt’s efforts to cure the symptoms of the Great Depression were stymied by Conservative Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Charles Evens Hughes, and the other “Old Men” of the Court, who struck down New Deal Legislation as unconstitutional time-after-time. The Court seemed to fight Roosevelt and his New Deal Reforms every step of the Way with rulings of unconstitutionality.

Roosevelt became so frustrated with “The Nine Old Men” that he threatened to increase the size of the Court by appointing members who he knew would vote to support his innovative programs. Even Liberal Democrats rebelled at this scheme of “Court Packing” as very questionable. The number of justices on the Supreme Court had never been definitively set by law Roosevelt had argued. The “Supreme Court”, as a specific entity, is not even mentioned in the Constitution. In point of fact, its membership has varied over the history of the institution. I don’t want to side-track you dear reader but you might like to know that the number of justices on the Supreme Court has changed six times since it’s founding in 1789. In 1789 there were six justices on the Supreme Court, and in 1807, membership was increased to seven. In 1837, the number of justices was fixed at nine, but in 1863 it was increased to ten, and in 1866, the number was reduced to seven. In 1869, the number of Justices on the Supreme Court was increased to nine again, and that is where its membership has stood for the next 156 years.

The press was savage with Roosevelt, and the cartoons criticizing him were brutal. One of the funniest showed the “New Roosevelt 15 man Supreme Court” with its six new members. All of them had Roosevelt’s face and broad smile (below). Another depicted Roosevelt leaning on a fence enclosing a paddock while donkeys, representing Democratic Congressmen in full revolt, back-kicking turf, dust, and other matter all over him as he bewails his hard fate (at top of article). The free press had a field day with Roosevelt’s perceived attempted Power-grab.

There is no doubt in my mind that if Franklin D. Roosevelt had lived and enjoyed the semblance of good health, at the age of 66 ,he would have run for a fifth term and won in 1948. In 1952, Roosevelt would only have been 70 years old. Another term would hardly have been out of the question. Eisenhower, Reagan, Biden, and Trump were all over 70 and even eighty in Biden’s case at the conclusion of his tenure in office. Next year Donald Trump turns 80 in the sunny and merry month of May. When he concludes this term of office, he will be in his 83rd year, and this will be his last term in office without a Constitutional Amendment saying otherwise. An interesting fact that many of you most likely have thought about is that a new change in the Constitution does not affect the incumbent office holder. For example if the 22nd Amendment was passed during Roosevelt’s lifetime, by law it would have applied to him in the next election. He would have been personally exempted as Truman was in 1952. But Truman did not choose to run for office that year, so the whole thing was moot.

According to the Twenty-Second Amendment, a person cannot serve as president of The United States for more than two-terms-and less-than-one-half-of-another-term. Most people are not aware of that “Less-than-half-of-one-term” thing. What is that all about? Can you actually run for less than half a term as President of the United States? Actually, you can’t! But if you are Vice-President, or God forbid, Speaker of the House of Representatives and succeed to the Presidency because of the death or incapacitation of the Chief of State and/or the Vice President as well, you would be entitled to run for two full terms in your own right if you are serving out less than half a term of the fallen leader’s term of office as his successor.

The two term limit cannot be overturned as “Unconstitutional” by the Supreme Court, because the Twenty-Second Amendment is an intrinsic part of the Constitution and has been since its ratification in 1951. That amending process had begun when the State of Maine began the amendment’s ratification process in 1947. If Mr. Trump wants a third term as President, before he could seek the office, he would need an amendment to the Constitution approved by at least 37 of the fifty state legislatures after a positive vote of two thirds of both houses of Congress. Good luck with that. The Founding Fathers had no intention of making the Constitutional amending process an easy one. The election of 2028 is not that far away when considering how quickly these things do not happen. For example, The Equal Rights Amendment has been kicking around for more decades then most of you have been alive! And it has always been a mystery to me why the people in this country cannot say that men and women are equal. The amendment has failed just by the slimmest of margins, but failed it has. A lot of emotional phony arguments have been advanced against it calculated to turn unsophisticated voters against it. But again this is another article.

It has been my experience that in most cases women are far more equal than men to any task and situation that may be at hand. And I can I say that with all objectivity based on the empirical evidence of my own very long life experience. But that is also another article for another time.

I have become a convert to term limitations. There are more than three hundred millions of folks living in this great land of ours, and I am more than sure that there are limitless and politically savvy human resources out there who can and will do a fine job of running this government of ours at every level. Nobody, including me, is indispensable in the conduct of the affairs of public life and the common wheal. I think that the Twenty Second Amendment is a great idea, and I support it.