Twenty-Second Amendment

AuthorDennis J. Mahoney
Pages2741-2742

Page 2741

Although, as ALEXANDER HAMILTON explained in THE FEDERALIST #69, the President was "to be re-eligible as often as the people of the United States shall think him worthy of their confidence," a constitutional custom dating back to the administration of GEORGE WASHINGTON limited the President of the United States to two terms in office. In

Page 2742

1940, however, with the Great Depression finally coming to an end and with most of the world already engaged in WORLD WAR II, FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT sought and won election to a third term. He was subsequently elected to a fourth term, although he died sixty days after that term began.

The Twenty-Second Amendment makes the two-term limit a part of the formal Constitution. Congress proposed the amendment in March 1947 and RATIFICATION was complete four years later.

The effect of the amendment on the balance of power between the executive and the legislature is not clear. Hamilton, who personally had advocated a life term for the President, speculated in The Federalist #71 that Presidents would become more submissive to Congress as elections approached; and DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER argued during his second term that his ineligibility for reelection was a guarantee that he was more disinterestedly public-spirited than congressmen who opposed him. In the 1980s, on the other hand, journalists and political scientists who had come to see elections as retroactively...

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