Presidential Term Limits in American History: Power, Principles, and Politics

Chapter 7 Ambition, Democracyx, and Constitutional Balance

cHaPter 7 amBition, democracy, and constitutional Balance I know personally from experience that there is a certain zone which when a man has walked through it, he has got to be careful. Maybe Time was the scissors that Delilah used for shearing Samson! . . . I am afraid— deeply and morally afraid—because I love my country and want it to go right, that I can hear Delilah’s scissors clicking. William Allen White since the passage of the Twenty-second Amendment, conventional wisdom has held that presidents become lame ducks in their second terms. This wisdom seemed to hold an especially prominent place during the second term of George W. Bush. For instance, in early 2007 Newsweek reported a poll showing that “[w]ith Bush widely viewed as an ineffectual ‘lame duck’ (by 71 percent of all Americans), over half (53 percent) of . . . respondents now say they believe history will see him as a below-average president.” Additionally, “more than half the country (58 percent) say they wish the Bush presidency were simply over.”1 And this with nearly two full years to go in his presidency . The poll and the attitudes conveyed therein raise key questions about presidential tenure in America historically and contemporarily. Can the so-called lame duck phenomenon be empirically verified and grounded? More specifically, did Bush, Clinton, Reagan, and Eisenhower, those presidents ostensibly rendered lame ducks by the Twenty-second Amendment, experience diminished power—and popularity—in their second terms as a direct result of their inability to pursue a third term? Or, alternatively, are second-term failures the result of other factors, such as fatigue, increasing partisan acrimony, or the inevitable clashes 144 | chapter 7 of ambitious politicians? Regardless of the cause, do the failures of recent second-term presidents suggest the wisdom of that longstanding reform proposal, the six-year term with no reeligibility? Beyond questions of reeligibility, what are the American people to do with a president who has lost the confidence of the country but still has half or more of his term remaining? Given that impeachment has traditionally not been used as “vote of no confidence,” should Americans consider instituting some form of recall or “no confidence” vote for presidents that may be triggered in the middle of their terms? Although this would obviously run counter to the Hamiltonian perspective, which established the four-year term specifically to insulate the president from the people’s immediate judgment, one might wonder whether this perspective is out of touch with a modern democratic nation. These are all serious questions that follow from the foregoing analysis of presidential tenure, and each is addressed in this concluding chapter. First, the chapter considers the evidence for the lame duck phenomenon. As the previously mentioned poll’s suppositions evidence, many today assume the validity of the phenomenon. However, as we will see, there is very little direct evidence to confirm the lame duck theory. This is not to say that the Twenty-second Amendment fails to influence the actions of presidents but rather that the dire predictions of critics have not come to fruition. Nevertheless, if presidential failure in the second term is not directly the result of the two-term limit, it is well to consider the advisability of second terms in general. This is the second main task of the chapter. Presidential historian Lewis Gould—who does link second-term failures in part to the Twenty-second Amendment—has recently suggested that because second terms are so rarely successful, modern presidents would be better off serving simply one term.2 I thereby treat the evidence regarding second-term failures of American presidents in general (not just modern presidents) and what might be done to address the problems of second terms. Third, and related, the chapter also examines in some detail the arguments for and against the six-year, non-renewable term, a proposal that has had numerous advocates—including presidents—throughout our history. Finally, we consider the status quo, our two-term constitutional rule, in light of what has been learned about the lame duck phenomenon as well as second-term failure in general. We also treat arguably the most critical issue of presidential tenure in the twenty-first century: securing adequate leadership in a time of crisis. While concerns with presidents becoming lame ducks seem relatively baseless, the Hamiltonian concern ambition, democracy, and constitutional Balance | 145 about providing leadership in a time...