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The 22nd Amendment Should Be Repealed
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10350 |
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Current Issues
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12 / 1986 |
2,651 Words |
| Author
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Dan Peterson
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"Nothing appears more plausible at first sight, nor more ill-founded upon close inspection, than a scheme...of continuing the Chief Magistrate in office for a certain time and then excluding him from it, either for a limited period or forever after." Alexander Hamilton wrote these words in 1788 to defend the decision by the Founding Fathers not to include in the Constitution any limitation on the number of terms a president could serve.
In the years right after World War II, however, having had the chance to look back upon the handiwork to Franklin D. Roosevelt during his four terms in office, Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures disagreed. The 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, limiting each president to only two terms, was passed by Congress in 1947 and ratified by the states in 1951. Though the amendment seemed "plausible at first sight" in reaction to the reign of Roosevelt, it remains "ill-founded upon close inspection." The founding Fathers, as usual, were more adept at constitution-making than were their progeny. The 22nd Amendment should be repealed.
Now is a good time to reconsider the issue. The end of the second term of one of the most popular presidents in recent decades is visible on the horizon. There are those who pine for his continuation in office, and Representative Guy Vander Jagt (R-Michigan) has publicly proposed repeal of the amendment. This is only the second time since the amendment was passed that the two-term limitation actually would require a sitting president to refrain from running again. The amendment first applied to Dwight D. Eisenhower, but the recentness of its adoption, and the absence of any conspicuous desire on Eisenhower's part to seek a third term, made serious reconsideration of the amendment unlikely at that time. Thus, the approaching end of President Reagan's second term furnishes the first real occasion for reflection.
Not for Reagan
Yet any move toward repeal should have nothing to do with the possibility of a third term for Reagan. While he has made it clear that he favors repeal, he has also stated that removal of the bar should not apply to him. And despite Reagan's popularity, there is reason to suspect that a attempt to promote him for a third term might receive less than overwhelming support. Most importantly, though, the Constitution is for the ages. It should reflect our most sober judgment cases. Changes to it should not be made to accommodate personalities or for transitory political motivations.
We must look to deeper reasons, and when we do, we find that they strongly favor repeal. Under our system of government, there is an inherent tendency toward instability of both policy and personnel. Popular election of leaders tends to foster turnover in office and to lend undue weight to short-term political expediency in policy formulation. From a policy viewpoint, the problem is particularly acute in Congress, the most "popular" branch. Allowing a president to serve more than two terms would increase the strength of the presidency in relation to the other parts of government, promote stability in policy, allow plans of a more long-term nature to be formulated and followed, and, as a consequence, permit greater national effectiveness to be achieved, particularly in foreign policy and defense.
Considerations of stability are always
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