Single term presidency: Only one bite at the apple
It’s high time to revive a proposal that some political scientists and historians saw muted when Milton S. Eisenhower (1899-1985), the younger brother of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, passed away in 1985. And that proposal was the limitation of presidents to a single term in office.
Eisenhower, who served as president of three major universities, as well as adviser to several presidents, was passionate about the one-term restriction. He thought Congress and the states got it all wrong when the 22nd Amendment, limiting chief executives to two terms, was proposed in 1947 and ratified in 1951. The problem he foresaw over a lifetime of political observation was that “democracy contains the seeds of its own destruction.”
In theory, presidents can be impeached and removed from office. In practice, that’s never happened because of the hard-tomeet constitutional requirements. Secondterm presidents are more likely to be risktakers and flout tradition and even laws, with their safe harbor a pliant public opinion that can be exploited, especially if resort to demagoguery is employed.
To be sure, the Founding Fathers were also worried about the powers and tenure of the presidency for the obvious reason that they had just fought a war against what they deemed the unbridled executive power of Great Britain. For that reason, the first federal government in America during the Revolutionary War, the Articles of Confederation, had only a symbolic president or presiding officer over a Congress representing states.
At the Constitutional Convention, some delegates recognized that human nature was pretty much the same from generation to generation. To wit, individuals attaining the highest political post in the land, like British kings, were likely to hold on to it as long as possible. For that reason, members of the Convention made the election process an indirect one removed from popular control, with each state through the Electoral College free to “appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors …”
One great fear was that chief executives would spend their first term campaigning for the second, thereby depriving the nation of their undivided attention and effort. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) had a threepronged solution to this dilemma: a plural executive, an unpaid position — and no second terms.
Sixteen of the nation’s elected presidents have had second terms. And it’s evident that the five most recent second-term holders, from Richard Nixon (Watergate), Ronald Reagan (Iran-Contra), Bill Clinton (Monica Lewinsky), George W. Bush (Iraq) and Barack Obama (intense partisanship) have been plagued with second-term blues.
Even George Washington (1732-1799) had a difficult final four. As his biographer, Marcus Cunliffe, points out: “Whether or not Washington guessed it, his second administration was to expose him to more criticism than he had suffered in his entire life. He had already, as President, been perturbed by faction in the country as a whole and faction within the government in particular. Now, as grave issues of foreign policy divided the nation, the discord was to become strident.”
Indeed, when GW left office in March 1797, he noted in his diary: “Much such a day as yesterday in all respects. Mercury at 41.” And on his death two years later, Washington was far from being elevated to a national hero.
A single-term presidency would mean that White House occupants would get only one bite at the apple of accomplishing something. Freed of the fear of flying in a re-election, the president would have ample time to plan and implement programs.
No doubt, presidents would find it difficult to give up all the trappings of the Oval Office after a single term. But Benjamin Franklin had another way of looking at public service. He noted that “in free governments the rulers are the servants and their people their superiors and sovereigns. For the former therefore to return to the latter was not to degrade, but promote them — and it would be imposing an unreasonable burden on them to keep them always in a state of servitude.”