Home / General / Counterfactual history: If not for the 22nd amendment, how many modern presidents would have been elected to a third term?

Counterfactual history: If not for the 22nd amendment, how many modern presidents would have been elected to a third term?

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The 22nd amendment, which limits presidents to being elected twice — and also limits presidents who have served more than half of another president’s elected term from being elected more than once; for example Ford wouldn’t have been eligible for re-election if he had won in 1976 — was jammed through by a Republican party that was frustrated by FDR being elected four times in a row.

Another factor that helped pass it, I suspect, was that FDR was on death’s door when he was re-elected in 1944, which was well known among political elites at the time, and may have bolstered the idea that more than two terms was a bad idea from, roughly speaking, a medical point of view. (In this regard it’s worth noting that a lot of people argued after Ford lost to Carter that, even though he was otherwise obviously the heir apparent to the nomination, Reagan would be too old to be the GOP nominee in 1980, because he would be 69. I guess 82 is the new 69. But that’s a subject for another post).

Since then, the following presidents were in a position to run for a third elected term but were constitutionally barred from doing so:

Eisenhower

Would he have run again if not for the amendment?

Definitely.

Would he have won?

Probably.

Reagan

Would he have run again?

Probably. Who was going to tell him no? I guess the answer to that is Nancy Reagan — it was super obvious to everybody close to him that Reagan was deteriorating cognitively in a serious way during his second term. But I bet they would have rolled the dice anyway.

Would he have won?

Yeah he would have won. The Democrats at the time were in a fetal position, hence the nomination of Michael Dukakis. The media would have covered up just how bad Reagan’s mental state was, and . . . uh, it would have been a pretty awkward third term. Hopefully nobody would have gotten nuked semi-accidentially.

Clinton

Would he have run again?

Yes.

Would he have won?

Yes.

The more interesting counter-factual is, would the GOP have backed off on the Lewinsky nonsense, once it was obvious it was helping Clinton, if he had been eligible for re-election? My guess is no, because they really went around the bend on that thing. An intern for Christ’s sake! (Narrator voice: She wasn’t actually an intern).

GWB

Would he have run again?

No.

Would he have won?

N/A

Obama

Would he have run again?

Definitely

Would he have won?

Against Trump, if we’re going all the way down the counter-factual road? I’d say that’s a really interesting question, for certain values of interesting. In other words it’s a real tough call, and all the more horrifying to consider as a result.

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