Congressman Guy Vander Jagt (R-MI) has sent out 500,000 fundraising letters asking recipients to donate to the Republican Congressional Committee to show their support of his idea to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Hot summers in Washington breed silly ideas like mosquitoes in a swamp, but this one is the silliest.
The 22nd Amendment limits Presidents to two terms. Vander Jagt is hoping that President Reagan’s popularity will convince a lot of people who like him, but don’t know much about our governmental process that, by sending their $10, they can somehow make it possible for us to continue on the Reagan roll for four more years. Vander Jagt’s staff insist that the Constitution could be changed in time for the 1988 election, which is the only assumption under which Republicans might donate to this hare-brained project. Indeed, if Vander Jagt’s repeal resolution exempted Ronald Reagan, it would have been greeted by a thunderous “ho hum.”
It is completely unrealistic to believe that a constitutional amendment to enable Ronald Reagan to have a third term could pass both Houses of Congress by a two-thirds majority, and then be ratified by 38 states, prior to the Republican Convention in 1988. After all, the U.S. House and the big majority of the state legislatures are controlled by the Democrats, and any notion that they are eager for Reagan to run again is ludicrous. Even if Speaker Tip O’Neill did allow a repeal amendment to move forward in the House, the Democrats would add a section to exempt Ronald Reagan from its application (as the 22nd Amendment exempted the incumbent, Harry Truman). The liberal columnists are already suggesting this. Furthermore, even if such an impossible scenario did take place, it is clear that Ronald Reagan is not going to run again; he even said he isn’t.
The 22nd Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution in the 1940s after President Franklin D. Roosevelt had violated our unwritten constitutional rule, observed by all Presidents starting with George Washington, that Presidents should limit themselves to two terms. Contrary to the nonsense that some columnists are writing today, it was not the 22nd Amendment that “threw our checks and balances out of kilter,” but the actions of F.D.R. in running for a third term, and then a fourth while he was a dying man. (That was in the days when CBS didn’t have a “medical reporter” to give us TV diagrams of the President’s urinary tract.)
The liberals really would like the 22nd Amendment repealed (of course with an exemption for Reagan) as a posthumous rehabilitation of F.D.R.’s reputation, and so they are weeping crocodile tears about what they claim is the handicap of Ronald Reagan’s “lame duck status.” The impressive victory Reagan won in persuading Congress to approve aid to the Contras proves that argument invalid.
The most disingenuous argument of all is that the 22nd Amendment “interferes with our democratic process by denying the American voters the ability to elect the President of their choice.” If anybody is worried about that, I suggest they start a movement to repeal the 25th Amendment, which is indeed a grievous interference with the democratic process. The 25th Amendment is what makes it possible for America to have a President who was never elected by the people at all! Because events were masked by Watergate publicity, few people today realize that Gerald Ford was never elected President of the United States, an office he held from 1974 through 1976. If anything is an interference with the democratic process, that is it!
The 25th Amendment, which was added to the U.S. Constitution in 1967, was a ploy of Nelson Rockefeller’s lifetime ambition to become U.S. President. He had bought his way into election and reelection as Governor of New York, but he failed again and again in his effort to buy a Presidential nomination from Republican National Conventions. So, he and his associates devised another route: appointment rather than election. It all happened in sequence. Spiro Agnew was forced to resign as Vice President in 1973, whereupon President Richard Nixon appointed Gerald Ford as Vice President. Then Nixon resigned in 1974, making Ford President, and Ford promptly appointed Nelson Rockefeller as Vice President.
The purpose of the U.S. Constitution is to “secure the blessings of liberty,” and the principal way they are secured is by the constitutional safeguards that restrain the power of government and perpetuate our unique process of self-government. Those who want to make sure that the blessings of liberty continue should work for the repeal of the 25th Amendment, not the 22nd.
