It was the type of brilliant notion we’ve come to associate with President Donald Trump’s slavish followers in the U.S. House of Representatives. Ogles proposed altering the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution so that Trump could serve a third term as president.
The amendment now reads: “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 the President more than once.”
Ogles would change the language as follows: ‘‘No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than three times, nor be elected to any additional term after being elected to two consecutive terms, 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 the President more than twice.’’
Ogles’ curious phrasing reveals something he might prefer to keep concealed.
Because his alteration allows only presidents who have served two non-consecutive terms to run again, it prevents former President Barack Obama from entering the fray. When Trump had the chance to run against Obama in 2012, the reality show star turned tale like a terrified rabbit.
If Obama—who has been Gallup’s most-admired man in America a record 12 times—were eligible to run for president again, Trump might find returning to private life attractive.
Still, even though Ogles’ proposal is transparently and shamelessly partisan in its nature, it does contain the kernel of a worthwhile thought.
I’ve always been skeptical about term limits. It’s always seemed to me that eliminating people from consideration for certain kinds of public service limits choices for voters and also relieves those voters of the responsibility to make wise choices regarding whom they elect.
The ban on third terms for presidents came following Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four-term presidency. Republicans at the time were so frustrated by their inability to defeat FDR at the ballot box that they changed the Constitution so that no one could ever again run up a record of electoral success like his.
Even at the time, it was a strangely self-defeating notion, both for the GOP and the nation.
Republican Dwight Eisenhower—the general who had led the United States and its allies to victory in World War II—captured the presidency in 1952. He won re-election in 1956, and likely would have been elected again in 1960 if he’d been able to run.
Instead, Republican Richard Nixon lost to Democrat John F. Kennedy that year.
The world often teetered on the edge of starting World War III in the early 1960s, the Cuban Missile Crisis being the most obvious instance of the threat. If the world had tumbled into another hellish global conflict, the guy who had led the United States to victory in the last world war would have been ineligible to lead the nation again.
This makes no sense.
Worse, imposing term limitation on the leader of the executive branch but on no other branch of the federal government encouraged the sort of game-playing and chicanery former U.S. Senate Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, used to run out the clock on Obama’s last term and pack the U.S. Supreme Court.
So, picking up on Ogles’ tiny, undernourished seed of an idea, here’s my thought: Either get rid of the term limits for presidents altogether or impose them across the board for every part of the federal government.
I’d prefer the first option, largely because in a self-governing society the people should choose the leaders they want. If the people keep electing the same folks again and again and again, well, that’s their right.
But if it’s impossible for politicians such as Ogles to trust the people and accept the voters’ verdicts, then let’s level the playing field and cap the number of years anyone can serve as president, senator, representative, Supreme Court justice and federal judge.
At the very least, this second option would accomplish one of Ogles’ goals.
It would spare Donald Trump from the, for him, terrifying prospect of facing Barack Obama in a presidential election.