WI: 22nd Amendment Only Applied to Consecutive Terms

It makes more sense, for a start. France has this for its presidential elections, for example.

Personally, I'm torn on term limits. On the one hand, why shouldn't an elected official be elected for as many terms as possible as long they can gain a plurality of votes with each election. On the other, there is the temptation for autocrats to fiddle the system to stay in power for as long as possible.
 
Personally, I'm torn on term limits. On the one hand, why shouldn't an elected official be elected for as many terms as possible as long they can gain a plurality of votes with each election. On the other, there is the temptation for autocrats to fiddle the system to stay in power for as long as possible.

I think you have to take into consideration the country. Not having term limits for a country like the United States, with its strong Democratic principles won't lead to an autocracy. Voters know how and when to kick someone out.

But yeah, for a country like, say, Zimbabwe, or one where there aren't such principles ingrained, they should be put in place.
 
Even inertia could keep them in power, especially with younger voters. "He's been President as long as I can remember, why shouldn't I keep voting for him?"

You see that with Congress, people being reelected because they've always had the job. Of course gerrymandering plays a role there, and presidential elections wouldn't have that.
 
Wrong subforum again...

No, it absolutely makes sense here and was in fact seriously considered as one of the proposed versions of the 22nd Amendment!

I had a post on it in soc.history.what-if in 2002 (which I reproduce here with one link correction):

***

"No person shall be elected to the office of President for more than two
*successive* terms." (Emphasis added)

This is one of the alternatives that was considered when Congress was
debating what would ultimately become the 22nd Amendment. (See https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/TSqO4QOQSJc/sI3YwOBRr50J
for my discussion of the legislative history.) This particular language
was voted down 50-34.

Suppose it had been adopted (instead of the language of Senator Taft which
became the Amendment as we know it). There are reasons why the Republican
majority of the 80th Congress might have found it attractive. After all,
like the amendment in OTL it was an implicit criticism of FDR--but unlike
OTL's amendement it would not be an implicit criticism of the Republicans
Grant and TR who sought third (non-successive) terms. (Of course maybe some
of the more conservative Republicans *wanted* a rebuke to Teddy as well as
Franklin.)
Apart from such considerations, this alternative 22nd Amendment, like the one
of OTL, would have answered the fear so many members of the 80th Congress
expressed--of a president using the advantages of incumbency to perpetuate
himself in power indefinitely. (Apparently, the thought was that only members
of Congress should be allowed to do that!) After all, when the third term
he seeks is not consecutive the ex-president does *not* have access to these
advantages. Of course one can imagine a situation where a president, having
served two terms, gets some "placeholder" elected to serve until he makes a
comeback. But there could be no guarantee that such a "placeholder," once
elected, would really be the stooge the ex-president wanted him to be, and
would not interfere with the ex-president's comeback.
So anyway, suppose this alternative 22nd Amendment is enacted. (Let's say
the language is tightened up to prevent any interpretation that a president
could resign in, say, the middle of his second term and then claim that he is
eligible to run a for a third term a couple of years later because it's not a
*successive* term.)
How would this change US politics? Some possibilities:
(1) Could Ike be persuaded to run for president again in 1964? His age and
health make this seem unlikely, but suppose the party leaders desperately
explain to him that only he could stop Goldwater, and that a Goldwater
nomination means an LBJ landslide and an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress?
("All those liberal big spenders will bankrupt the nation.")
(2) Suppose conservatives pressure Reagan to run in 1992? ("Bush is too
unpopular; he betrayed your legacy with his tax increase; he can't win a
second term--the party needs you," etc.) Could he beat Bush in the primaries
and then win the general election? Doubtful. To be sure, Reagan's
Alzheimer's was not officially diagnosed until 1994, but his deterioration
would be evident during any fairly long campaign.
(3) Of course there is always Richard Nixon, eligible in elections from 1980
onwards. (Remember, he was neither impeached nor convicted!) But I don't see
his comeback going quite *that* far. (Anyway, could Ford constitutionally
make Nixon's pardon contingent on a promise never to seek the presidency
again?)
(4) The most likely change is one that I suppose properly falls into
alt.history.future rather than this newsgroup--Bill Clinton would now be
preparing his 2004 presidential campaign. (Unless the very prospect of this
would lead to his being convicted by the Senate in 1999 in order to prevent
it--but that is very unlikely. Also, the Independent Counsel might take a
harder line on Clinton in 2001, believing him to be too dangerous *not* to
bring serious criminal charges against. But even if he gets Clinton
indicted, getting a jury to convict may be difficult, especially in the
District of Columbia.)

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/zOIyaBkvlN0/CC78keinl3wJ
 

Wallet

Banned
Here's the thing. Putin did this. President from 2000 to 2008, gets his Prime Minister Medevdev (puppet) to be President form 2008 to 2012. Putin is Prime Minister. Then Putin becomes President in 2012. Then he changes the constitution expanding his term limit. Then invades the Crimea.

And it's obvious Putin was in charge from 2008 to 2016. There is a video in which Obama is talking to President Medvedev about nukes in Europe, and Medvedev makes it clear he needs to talk to Putin before he does anything.

As you can see, there is a fear that a man can appoint a puppet to serve in his name while he is really in charge. Then runs later.
 
IMHO, either have term limits on the Presidency or don't (Personally, I would have no term limits on the executive and am torn on term limits on congress, although lately I've leaned toward term limiting congress). I see no point on having it only apply to two consecutive terms.
 
With the senate, maybe a 3 consecutive term limit, or a 4 term limit would be better. That would give them a maximum of 18/24 years in their seat, rather than forever and ever and ever and ever...
 
Term limits shift knowledge from elected representatives to unelected advisors, lobbyists, and bureaucrats. Notice how you generally only see American right-wingers call for them because they have no interest in governing anyway.
 
First, the 22nd Amendment was passed in the 1940s. Maybe some people think it was part of the original Constitution?

Second, yes in other countries the term limits are often applied to consecutive terms only.

This is the case for example in Brazil. There are theories that the 1964 military coup was to forstall Kubitschik (I may have the spelling incorrect) from returning to office. There are theories that the 2016, well, soft coup is aimed to prevent Lula from returning to power.

However, in the US this wouldn't make much difference for the same reason the 22nd Amendment hasn't made a huge amount of instance. Presidents tend to be too old to run again entering their eighth year of office. Election results, both from the sixth year mid-term elections, and from the eighth year presidential elections (which consistently show a popular vote swing against the presidential party), indicate that voter fatigue also sets in.

To get more specific, Eisenhower was simply too old in 1960, let alone 1964 (he died in 1965) to run, though I've seen histories still claim that he would have run and won in 1960 despite the 22nd Amendment. Lyndon Johnson didn't run IOTL in 1968 despite being eligible, was in bad health, and died in 1973. Nixon had obvious problems. Ford, Carter, and GHW Bush were constitutionally eligible to run for president at any time after leaving office and didn't. Reagan had issues with both age and health after 1988.

That leaves Clinton and GW Bush. In the case of Bush, his health is fine but he is not very popular. IOTL he barely won re-election in 2004. Clinton is a more interesting case. If he had been eligible to run again in 2000, I suspect the result would have been a much stronger Republican effort to impeach and remove him from office than IOTL in 1998, to make sure he would be either ineligible to run or too damaged to succeed in running for another term in 2000. I think they held back OTL because the only result of a successful removal would have been a President Gore running with the Democratic base fired up and with an incumbency advantage. But non-consecutive terms wouldn't matter as Clinton had a serious heart issues after leaving office. But either might have butterflied away Hilary Clinton's career in electoral politics.

Historically, Theodore Roosevelt left office in 2009 after serving nearly but not quite all of two terms, waited for years, and then ran for President again. So before the 22nd Amendment there is a single instance of something like this happening, and one -and-a-half instances (Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 and Grant in 1876 being the half) of a President trying for a third consecutive term.
 
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