No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
Section 2
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.
Despite never before being put into official law, most presidents had been restricted (self-imposed or by way of election) to only two years in office anyway. This was directly related to George Washington's decision to only serve for two terms so as to prevent any notion of kingly rule. However, seeing as this was never officially the case, there were many presidents that served for more than two terms: most notably if Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR served for a total of four terms (that's 16 years for you slow math people). This was unprecedented and the citizenry realized there had to be a change.
The idea behind term limits is that there needs to not be a monopoly on a presidency. What do you think? Should there be term limits? What if there are changes to the limits, would that be good or bad for us?
We have presidential term limits, but what about congress? Would these be a good idea? Why not? Let me know what you think in the comments below!
Check out a good summary of this amendment here.
No comments:
Post a Comment