When you first start thinking about Franklin Delano Roosevelt you might think of the New Deal, fireside chats, or possibly the United States role in World War II. Throughout Roosevelt's Rein as president, he has had to make many decisions possible more than any other president before or after him. Simply because no other president has been in office for more than two terms, except of course for FDR. He was elected for an unprecedented four terms. He was first elected as president in 1932 beating Herbert Hoover by an electoral vote of 472 to 59 and a popular vote of 22,809,638 to 15,758,901. In his second election in 1936 he won by an even greater margin defeating Alfred Landon and grabbing 523 of the electoral votes as compared to Landon's meager 8 electoral votes. The 1940 election was much closer, than the pervious two elections. Roosevelt does win over Wendell Willkie, but the election marks the first and only time in United States history that an president decides to run for a third term.
Although there were no legal restriction on how many terms a president might serve none of the previous 31 presidents had ever attempted to run for a third term. "The Constitutional congress of 17
. . .
This plan would have given the president the right to appoint one new justice for each justice who refused to retire with in six months of reaching the age of seventy. The Democratic - Republican presidents who followed him (James Madison and James Monroe) also limited themselves to two terms, and their Democratic Party successors also bound themselves to the tradition. He was riding a fine line between weather to run again or not, and when he realized that the United States could no longer stay out of the war he decide to run again. Never taking the time to consult Democratic leaders, him jumped right in. At the time, it seemed like no one liked the idea except for Roosevelt. It soon became obvious that there was no New Dealer that could fit the mold of FDR and win the nomination of the Democrats.
To complicate matters Roosevelt introduced his "Court packing" plan.
With such a tradition, one could wonder why would Roosevelt decided to run for more than two terms? Roosevelt, like any other man, had personnel ambitions, which may have played a role in his run for a third term.
As one might expect, the sharpest criticism of a possible third term came from conservative, anti New Deal Democrats. As a result of their opposition was the defeat of the President's programs in congress as part of effort to discredit Roosevelt. " (Pious,148)
Yes Roosevelt was aloud to run, but soon after his death in 1945 the Twenty-Second Amendment put an end to presidents attempting to run for more than two terms. George Washington began the two-term tradition, but Thomas Jefferson, who in 1809 announced that 'rotation in the office' was his reason for leaving the White House after two terms, first expressed its principles. Possible he also realized the harsh fact that regardless of the horror of war itself it would still help to stimulate our struggling economy and once and for all Bring America out of the Great Depression. Donahoe
University of Notre Dame Press 1965
The Presidency
Richard M.
Approximate Word count =
1813
Approximate Pages =
7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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