Talking About Constitutional Amendments: Did the 1947 United States Congress have candidates like Donald Trump in mind when it created the 22nd Amendment?

Did the 1947 United States Congress have candidates like Donald Trump in mind when it created the 22nd Amendment?

No. The 80th U.S. Congress, which was under Republican control in 1947, only had one man in mind when it approved the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, and he was dead.

That man was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States and the only one to run for the White House (and win) four times.

When the 80th Congress went into session on January 3, 1947, it reflected the nation’s weariness with the Democratic Party’s control of the government, which had lasted from 1933 to 1946, a period that included the twin challenges of the Great Depression and the Second World War. FDR and his party had steered the American ship of state through both storms decisively if not always adroitly. but as often happens when one party lingers too long in power, the electorate in 1946 got restless and decided it wanted change in Congress.

One of the biggest issues for the Republicans was the realization that the only reason that FDR had not been around for what for him would have been the ’46 midterm elections was the fact that he had died of a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945. Had it not been for that, the GOP-controlled Congress would still be dealing with a Chief Executive who had handily defeated Republican challengers four times in a row; even with his death (brought on by the President’s poor health and the stresses of being Commander-in-Chief during a global war), Roosevelt’s 1944 election victory guaranteed that a Democrat, and not a Republican, would sit in the Oval Office till at least January 20, 1949.

Now, the notion of a term limit on Presidents was not new; the issue cropped up from time to time starting in the 1780s, but since most Chief Executives chose not to run more than twice, the main impetus to the 22nd Amendment was FDR’s 12-year-long stay in the White House. Republicans had made Roosevelt’s 1940 bid for a third term issue a campaign issue during that year’s elections, and they were not thrilled that FDR was re-elected in 1944 mainly because the public did not want to “change horses in midstream” in the final year of World War II.

Obviously, one of the selling points of Presidential term limits was the fact that the awesome weight of carrying the nation’s burdens and responsibilities can and do take their toll on a President. Presidents are, after all, mere mortals, and stress, long workdays, and - in those days before the Jet Age - the effects of long overseas voyages in wartime aged FDR considerably. (And, all things being equal, Roosevelt was not elderly even by the standards of 1945; when he died that April, he was 62 years old, the same age as Dwight D. Eisenhower when he became President-elect in November of 1952. But the worries and cares of being President wore out FDR and aged him well beyond his years.)

So it is not a stretch to say that when Earl C. Michener (R-MI) introduced House Joint Resolution 27) on the House floor on February 26, 1947, Republicans (and the 47 Democratic Representatives who joined them on the vote) had their eye on the future, but their hearts on the recent past.