Is this conversation really up for debate over the Twenty-Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? As it stands, Section 1 states, “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 President more than once.”[1]
This amendment prohibits any person from being elected President of the United States more than twice. Long before it was ratified, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both chose not to seek a third term, helping establish the two-term tradition that lasted for generations. That tradition was broken by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected to a third term in 1940 and then a fourth term in 1944.[2][3]
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, delegates debated at length whether the chief executive should serve a single seven-year term without re-eligibility or shorter four-year terms with no fixed limit. In The Federalist No. 72, Alexander Hamilton argued that allowing a president to stand for re-election gave voters the ability to retain experienced leadership during national crises, whereas Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison from Paris warning that without a limit on re-eligibility, the presidency could easily become an office for life. When George Washington declined to stand for a third election in his September 1796 Farewell Address, and when Jefferson explicitly anchored that decision in principle in his 1805 and 1807 letters, their voluntary restraint created an unwritten constitutional custom that held for more than 140 years.[3][6][7]
Before 1940, several presidents tested the edges of that custom without overcoming it. Ulysses S. Grant sought a non-consecutive third nomination at the 1880 Republican National Convention after four years out of office, but deadlocked delegates ultimately nominated James A. Garfield after thirty-six ballots. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt, who had succeeded to the presidency in September 1901 following the assassination of William McKinley and won election in his own right in 1904, ran again at the head of the Progressive Party and finished second to Woodrow Wilson. Only amid the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe in 1940, and active global war in 1944, did voters elect Franklin D. Roosevelt to a third and fourth consecutive term.[1][2]
On March 21, 1947, Congress approved the amendment and submitted it to the states for ratification. The process was completed on February 27, 1951, when 36 of the 48 states had ratified it. At the time, Alaska and Hawaii had not yet been admitted as states. Once the required number of states approved it, the amendment became part of the Constitution.[4]
When the 80th Congress drafted House Joint Resolution 27 in early 1947, lawmakers included a specific transitional clause in Section 1 stating that the new restriction would not apply to any person holding the office of President when the article was proposed by Congress. That clause exempted incumbent President Harry S. Truman, who had succeeded to the presidency upon Franklin D. Roosevelt's death in April 1945, though Truman ultimately chose not to seek another full term in 1952. Congress also attached a seven-year ratification deadline in Section 2, and Minnesota became the thirty-sixth state legislature to ratify the amendment on February 27, 1951, completing the three-fourths threshold in just under four years.[1][4]
Roosevelt’s third and fourth terms raised serious concerns about whether any president should be allowed to serve unlimited terms. That reality helped lead to the ratification of the Twenty-Second Amendment. Repealing or changing it today would require another constitutional amendment. An amendment may be proposed by two-thirds of both houses of Congress or through a convention requested by two-thirds of the state legislatures. Either way, it would then require ratification by three-fourths of the states, or 38 out of 50.[5]
The text of Section 1 also establishes a clear mathematical rule for vice presidents or other officers who succeed to the presidency mid-term. If a successor serves two years or less of a term to which another person was elected President, that successor remains eligible to be elected twice in their own right, establishing a maximum theoretical service of ten years in office. Conversely, if a successor holds the office or acts as President for more than two years of a predecessor's term, that successor may be elected to the presidency only once. Because the operative verb in Section 1 is "elected," constitutional scholars and the Congressional Research Service have noted that the clause directly governs presidential elections rather than short-term statutory succession.[1][8]
Because Article V requires a supermajority of two-thirds in both the House of Representatives and the Senate followed by ratification in thirty-eight state legislatures, altering the Twenty-Second Amendment demands broad, durable bipartisan consensus across the country. Since 1951, members of Congress from both major political parties have periodically introduced joint resolutions to repeal the two-term limit during the administrations of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. None of those repeal resolutions ever secured the two-thirds congressional supermajority required even to send a proposed amendment to the states.[5][8]
Do we really want to repeal the Twenty-Second Amendment? I think two terms should be plenty for any sitting President. Maybe if Congress could stop being so shortsighted, We the People might have more of a voice on the real issues facing this country. This is not about one person or one political moment. It is about whether too much power should ever remain in one office for too long.