Nearly a century ago, the historian John Bach McMaster surveyed the first 138 years of the presidency and hazarded a prediction in the pages of The Atlantic: 'Should the time come when a president who has twice been elected to office seeks a third election, he will surely meet great opposition, for the no-third-term doctrine is still strong.' Within 13 years, he would be proven wrong. In 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt coasted to an unprecedented third term, capturing 55 percent of the popular vote and a whopping 85 percent in the Electoral College. As the writer Gerald W. Johnson observed the following year, 27 million voters 'trampled down the thitherto sacred third-term tradition in order to reelect the chief New Dealer.' Roosevelt was breaking no law at the time he sought a third term. The two-term presidential limit was a mere custom established when George Washington stepped down voluntarily after eight years in office. Two presidents'Ulysses S. Grant in 1880, and FDR's fifth...
learn more
Ratings & Reviews
Entrepreneur & Investor
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE