The Twenty-Second Amendment and the Limits of Presidential Tenure
Review by Philip Blumel
A fascinating new book was published last year that may be the best treatment of its subject available – and it is brimming with facts and insights relevant to the effort to term limit the U.S. Congress.
The book is “The Twenty-Second Amendment and the Limits of Presidential Tenure: A Tradition Restored” by Martin B. Gold. (Lexington Books, 2020). Gold is an attorney, teacher and author who lives in Washington DC and is an adjunct at George Washington University School of Political Management where he teaches a course on Advanced Legislative Procedures.
The book tells a detailed, chronological story about the rise of the presidential term limits tradition in the United States, starting with the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
To his great credit, Gold focuses on sharing information and lets the historical figures do the editorializing. This book is by no means a partisan polemic. Instead, it a serious academic book written for the library and specialists market. Good luck finding an affordable copy!
Gold’s history offers three important insights that are relevant to today’s debates over term limits: 1) Term limits are a founding principle of American democracy, not a modern invention; 2) Support for term limits has always been bipartisan, even if specific politicians often pushed the idea for partisan ends; and 3) Politicians who oppose term limits often couch their efforts in respectful words for the tradition and even include alternative term limits arrangements in order to divide support.
Term limits were there at the founding of this nation. Sometimes we hear that the authors of the Constitution rejected term limits at the Convention of 1787, and indeed there are none in the original version of that document. But this is not the whole story.
The 1787 Convention was called by Virginia, after a smaller convention held at Annapolis MD, for the purpose of a rework of the Articles of Confederation. Taking the lead, Virginia Gov. Edmund Randolph presented the outlines of a new Constitutional framework with 15 resolutions known as the Virginia Plan. As originally presented, the Virginia plan called for a one-term limit on the presidency.
This then was the starting point of the term limits discussion. As Rep. Louis Graham (R-PA) pointed out during the 1947 debates on the 22nd Amendment, no subject took up more time in the 1787 Convention than the length and number of terms of the president. In fact, while some like Gouverneur Morris of New York were opposed to all term limits, others such as Charles Pickney of South Carolina, Virginia’s George Mason and the colorful Luther Martin of Maryland argued for a single 6- or 7-year term. The lack of a term limit on the presidency was more a function of lack of agreement of what a proper term and term limits should be and not a consensus view that limits were not appropriate.
As Gold notes, Morris was the most convicted on the subject and turned out to be “the framer most responsible for shaping the presidential office.” Other features of the new Constitution, such as the Electoral College, were seen as safeguards that persuaded term limits supporters to compromise on the idea.
The lack of presidential term limits concerned many. Thomas Jefferson, who was serving as minister to France at the time and did not participate in the 1787 convention, wrote to James Madison in December of that year that a “feature I dislike, and strongly dislike, is the abandonment, in every instance, of the principal of rotation in office.” Jefferson initially sided with those who supported a single 7-year term but later came around to the view that two four-year terms was superior. This is not due to the extension of one year, but instead because “there should be a peaceable way of withdrawing a man in midway who is doing wrong.”
Jefferson was not alone.
In the state conventions created to ratify the new U.S. Constitution, Virginia, North Carolina and New York all officially called for Constitutional amendments to include 8-year presidential term limits, but these did not make it into what we now call the Bill of Rights.
What failed to be established in law became established in tradition. In his Farewell Address in 1796, the nation’s first president George Washington stepped down after two terms, citing some term limits friendly reasoning but was not actually adamant about the two-term cap. The tradition got nailed down when the third president Thomas Jefferson also declined to run for a third term with explicit reference to Washington’s example.
As Jefferson said, “Believing that a representative government, responsible at short periods of reelection, is that which produces the greatest sum of happiness to mankind, I feel it is a duty to do no act which shall essentially impair that principle.”
The tradition became part of the American psyche, although it was periodically challenged by those who continue to advocate a single term limit. President Andrew Jackson, who also followed the tradition and retired after two terms, sent six messages to Congress calling for an amendment to create a single 4- or 6-year term.
This embrace of presidential term limits were deep and non-partisan, much as term limits are today.
The initial challenges to the two-term tradition came from the Republican Party, with President Ulysses S. Grant in 1876 and 1880 and Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. In each case, Democrats led the defense of the two-term tradition. As Gold points out, “talk of a third term for Grant roiled the midterm election. Grant failed to renounce interest, stoking Democratic turnout in 1874.” This mid-term election disrupted Republican dominance of Congress that had existed since the end of the Civil War. In 1875, Rep. William Springer (D-IL) led House Democrats in passing a resolution declaring a third-term bid to be contrary to the public interest.
In the end both the Grant and Roosevelt challenges were false alarms. Both presidents, who would have allowed themselves to be “drafted” into nomination, were not. Roosevelt bolted the Republican Party and ran with the nascent Progressive Party. Anticipating this, Democrats inserted in their platform a pro-term limits plank. After the election, hearings were held and such an amendment was approved in the U.S. Senate on a bipartisan basis. The House took no action.
Perhaps we should say that support was tri-partisan. Concerned that yet another Republican incumbent, Calvin Coolidge, might be slyly encouraging another “draft” movement for a nomination to a third term, Sen. Robert LaFollette Jr., a Wisconsin Republican and later co-founder of the Progressive Party, introduced a Sense of the Senate resolution saying the two-term tradition must be observed. The resolution passed 56-26, with 37 Democrats, 18 Republicans and one senator from the Farmer-Labor Party.
This multi-partisan history is important as there is an inaccurate perception that term limits have historically been a Republican issue. This misconception stems from the fact a Republican Congress led the imposition of presidential term limits after President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the war as a pretext to retain power for a third (1940) and even part of a fourth (1944) term.
Even with Democratic majorities in the Congress, hearings were held on a presidential term limits amendment in 1945. Several resolutions were introduced, including a two-term, eight-year limit and also for a single six-year term. The latter, proposed by Democratic Sen. W. Lee O’Daniel of Texas, would also have limited members of Congress to six years.
Then, in the 1946 mid-terms, the Republican Party captured large majorities in both houses with the term limits amendment as their first order of business. This ended with approval and ratification on Feb. 27, 1951, a day celebrated today as Term Limits Day.
The debate over the amendment in both houses is fascinating, but much of the rhetoric would be familiar to term limits advocates and opponents today. More interesting, perhaps, is a couple of anti-term limits strategies and arguments that arose.
In the debate over the amendment, there was a movement to replace the two-term, eight-year tradition with a single six-year term amendment. While this idea has competed with the two-term tradition since before the Constitution was written, the movement for the single term at this time had among its backers prominent anti-term limits Senators who were trying to derail a term limits amendment altogether. Specifically, House Judiciary Committeeman Rep. Emanuel Celler (D-NY) – who admitted before and later he opposed any term limits amendment — proposed the single six-year term idea in the House and pressed it.
Is this not an echo of today’s politician who claims to agree wholeheartedly with the need for Congressional term limits, but only a unique proposal of his or her own that has no chance of passage?
Another interesting argument against the term limits amendment was that Congress need not act at all because the Constitution under Article V permitted states to initiate the amendment process. If sentiment was truly strong for term limits, two-thirds of the states could apply for a convention on the subject and Congress, per Article V, “must” call one.
Such a movement was indeed under way. Inexplicably not mentioned by Gold, prior to the 1945 Congressional hearings at least four states (Iowa, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin) officially applied for a convention to propose amendments limited to the subject of presidential term limits.
That movement mirrors one today where four states (Florida, Alabama, Missouri and West Virginia) have applied for a Congressional term limits convention.
Like presidential term limits, Congressional term limits have a long pedigree and one looks forward to the future when a history book of this quality can be written about another successful campaign to pass a term limits amendment.
As Gold’s excellent book demonstrates, it can be done.
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U.S. Term Limits is the oldest and largest grassroots term limits advocacy group in the country. We connect term limits supporters with their legislators and work to pass term limits on all elected officials, particularly on the U.S. Congress. Find out more at termlimits.com.