The Twenty-second Amendment: Presidential Term Limits

“It’s a good thing we’ve got a 22nd Amendment or I would run again.” (Bill Clinton)

George Washington established the tradition that a president would only seek two terms in office. But Franklin Delano Roosevelt broke that precedent. During the crises of the Great Depression and World War II, FDR was elected to his third term in 1940 and his fourth term in 1944. He died in April 1945, soon after his fourth inauguration. A new Republican Congress quickly sought to set term limits for future presidents in 1947, and the Twenty-second Amendment was ratified in 1951.

SECTION 1

This Section states:”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. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.”

Section 1 forbids any person he elected president more than twice and, if serving more than two years of another president’s term, to be elected more than once. Therefore, ten years is the maximum term any president can serve. The amendment specifically did not apply to President Harry Truman, who had served almost all of FDR’s fourth term. Truman was reelected in 1948, but chose not to run for a second full term in 1952. By denying even the prospect of a third term, the Twenty-second Amendment formally created a lame-duck president who tends to lose influence in office during the end of a second term.

SECTION 2

This Section says. “This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.”

Section 2 establishes the time limit for ratification and its method. Although the Twenty-second Amendment is usually regarded as a Republican measure to limit a popular Democratic president, many state legislatures controlled by Democrats nonetheless ratified the amendment.

In 1934, at his birthday party, President Franklin Roosevelt spoofed critics who charged that he behaved like an emperor-even before his fourth term.