When Ronald Reagan made his last trip on Air Force I, flying from the White House to take up residence in California, naturally he talked to the press. He said he wouldn’t retire but would hit the lecture circuit. What would he talk about? He mentioned his favorite subject, urging passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment, and then he added another: repealing the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
That’s the amendment that limits Presidents to two terms, a practice which most Americans consider traditional-hallowed by the precedent George Washington set in declining a third term. It was broken once only – by the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt to a third and fourth term in 1940 and 1944. Enough Americans were offended by his flouting of tradition that they locked the two-term tradition into constitutional granite so another President could not do likewise.
To pass an amendment takes a super-majority – two-thirds of both Houses of Congress and three-fourths of state legislatures. Many who voted for Roosevelt’s extra two terms must have supported the constitutional change.
Various elitist groups, such as Lloyd Cutler’s Committee on the Constitutional System, keep proposing that we repeal the 22nd Amendment, but they don’t attract popular support for this idea because the American people’s consensus is that two terms are enough. To hear Ronald Reagan echoing one of Cutler’s pet projects was not only a surprise, but it shows why the 22nd Amendment should not be repealed.
Every time Reagan talks about this subject, of course, he says that any repeal should only take effect after he departed from the scene. In no way has he been self-serving in trying to change the Constitution.
But it is significant that President Reagan thinks that it is a neat idea for any President (and he must have considered the subject from his own personal perspective) to have available the option of running for a third (and fourth) term.
Also, it’s not apparent that others around President Reagan would have exempted him from any constitutional repeal. I was present at a large reception in 1986 when Congressman Guy Vander Jagt, chairman of the Republic Congressional Campaign Committee, announced with enthusiasm and fanfare that he was starting a political and fund-raising drive to repeal the 22nd Amendment so that we could run Ronald Reagan for a third term in 1988.
Let’s consider a possible scenario if Vander Jagt’s idea had been successful. Let’s remember that, as Ronald Reagan’s second term came to a close, he was even more popular with the American people than Franklin Roosevelt was at the end of his second term.
When the presidential primary sweepstakes started in January 1988, who do you think would have gone into the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary or the primaries of Super Tuesday to challenge our popular incumbent President? Vice President George Bush? Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole? Congressman Jack Kemp? Pat Robertson? You have to be kidding!
No matter that Ronald Reagan was then 77 years old. No matter what the White House had been coasting in neutral for nearly two years, and there was no indication that political leadership could be resuscitated. Ronald Reagan was popular with the people and could so easily be predicted to win the Republican primaries that no practical politician would have challenged him.
Wiser heads would have said behind closed doors that Reagan should quit while he was ahead, that his time was coming to an end. But the demands of the politicians on the cutting edge of getting votes into the ballot box would have been overwhelming; they would have run Reagan again whether or not that was his personal preference.
The saga of Ronald Reagan would have been like the end of Tom Landry, who was an all-American hero for a quarter of a century. When his 26 years of victories for the Dallas Cowboys (233 wins, 132 losses) turned sour (last three years: 17 wins, 30 losses), the team’s owner offered Landry a graceful retirement. No way, said Landry, “I’ll step down when I feel like I’m ready.”
Then a new owner took over the Cowboys and simply replaced Landry, who then complained on television that “it could have been handled better.” Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to tell someone his time is up, especially when he is a hero, still enjoying the power, the perks, and the publicity of an exalted position.
I’m glad we had the 22nd Amendment to tell Ronald Reagan that it was time to leave so that he could depart with dignity while he is still ahead in the hearts and minds of Americans. We need that constitutional provision, always.
