Lacking any evidence to the contrary, it may have been the case that the subject which the 22nd Amendment was originally designed to address was simply too fraught to admit of a speedy ratification. After all, the reason that the Republican Party took to advocating for the relevant constitutional reform in the first place was that a Democratic president had shown himself to be so fantastically popular as to convince his fellow Americans that the two-term limit need not have applied to him. There was, to be certain, some amount of earnest conviction behind subsequent Republican calls for amending the Constitution so as to prevent unlimited presidential reelections. All the same, it would be paltering with the truth to claim that the Republican efforts in question were not motivated principally by partisan enmity. And while the aforementioned Democrat did die before his detractors were able to succeed in barring him from further service, it would also have been patently dishonest for them to claim that their continued support for presidential term limits wasn’t in some sense prompted by their continued disdain for his memory. Contempt – valorous though it was not – likewise almost certainly drove many a Southern Democrat in Congress to break with their party and support the aforementioned H.J. Res. 27. It wasn’t that these Democrats actively disliked having their party stay in power for so long. That is to say, they surely preferred Roosevelt to any of his proposed Republican alternatives. But as, over the course of the 1930s and 1940s, the character of the New Deal became increasingly liberal – and as these same congressional Democrats found President Roosevelt increasingly disinterested in listening to their concerns – a degree of personal and political resentment naturally began to set in. By the first meeting of the 80th Congress, of course, Roosevelt had been dead for some time, and there no longer seemed to be much point in holding on to old grudges. And yet, regardless of whether or not it made practical sense in the moment, some Republicans and Southern Democrats were still thirsting for some kind of revenge. Or at least, if not revenge, then some manner of last word.
On the part of those Democrats who remained ardently in favor of the New Deal, of course, the Republican fixation on establishing terms limits doubtless appeared to be both personally and politically vindictive. Franklin Roosevelt, over the course of his twelve years in office, had helped to pull the country out of the worst financial crises in its history. His various New Deal policies had saved countless private farms from being foreclosed, dramatically shored up the nation’s aging public infrastructure, brought cheap electric power to millions of people, and created millions of jobs in nearly every sector of the economy. Bearing all of this in mind, what else could Republican efforts to ensure his precedent-setting administration was not replicated be but purest, basest resentment? It wasn’t that they felt the man deserved some kind of reprimand for having catastrophically mismanaged the country. In point of fact, he hadn’t mismanaged anything. Rather, it was that Roosevelt’s efforts to alleviate the worst symptoms of a worldwide economic recession had been successful at the same time that they flew in the face of contemporary conservative orthodoxy. The kinds of policies which the New Deal came to embody, as far as the essential principles of the Republican Party were concerned, were not supposed to work. And the American people, confronted with the effects of the same, were not supposed to embrace them. The fact that they ultimately were successful, and that the American people did embrace them – to the tune of electing Franklin Roosevelt an unprecedented four times – was accordingly a source of frustration and bitterness for the contemporary Republican leadership.
Just so, these facts were understandably a tremendous source of satisfaction to a large swath of the Democratic Party. Not only did to allow them to boast – not unfairly – that theirs was the party that had saved the country from utter collapse, but it gave them – in the form of Roosevelt – a standard bearer the likes of which they’d not been able to lay claim to since the days of Andrew Jackson. Since the American Civil War, the Republicans had been the dominant party within the American domestic political sphere. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the association of the Democratic Party with treason and rebellion – both of which the Republicans made a point of emphasizing – led to a decades-long period during which nationally beloved figures like Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt seemed to transcend their status as Republicans politicians to become immortal symbols of the nation’s values and its growing prestige on the world stage. The Democrats, it was true, did not spend this entire era in the political wilderness. The two presidents, during this period, who were members of the party of Jackson each served for two terms. And while it was not a coincidence that Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson were the only Democrats to ascend to the office of chief executive between 1868 and 1932, in their day they both enjoyed their fair share of popularity and acclamation. But by the end of Wilson’s second term, with the conflict over the League of Nations having damaged his reputation significantly, the American people seemed prepared to reassert what for all intents and purposes had become the domestic political status quo. Between 1920 and 1928, three more Republicans were accordingly elected to the office of President. The Democrats, during this period, certainly had their share of triumphs. But it doubtless still appeared, to many party members and outside observers alike, that the era of Republican dominance was still not prepared to abate.
Bearing all of this in mind, it becomes abundantly clear why certain members of the Democratic Party would have been inclined to cherish Franklin Roosevelt as a symbol in the immediate aftermath of his death. Not only had his various policy successes completely rejuvenated the Democratic brand – as evidenced, once again, by his unparalleled electoral success – but his attempts at forging workable political alliances had left the party, as of the late 1940s, with a much-expanded set of electoral constituencies. The party, in short, was much more popular than it had been at any time since the 1850s, and its reach had greatly expanded beyond its previously established political base of Southerners, naturalized immigrants, and working-class urbanites. Southern Democrats, it was true, were the least likely among their co-partisans to be unambiguously pleased with this outcome. But the fact nevertheless remained that Franklin Roosevelt had returned the party to the center stage of American politics, to the general benefit of all of its members whether they agreed with his policies or not. And what’s more, by seeming to obliterate the popular bias against serving more than two terms as President, Roosevelt had left his party with an ideal path to ongoing control of the much-expanded federal government. By following his example, furthering his policies, and campaigning on his memory, the Democratic Party might conceivably have extended their political dominance into the indefinite future. The Republicans, to be sure, had managed to take back control of Congress, but the next election was just around the corner. Who was to say, in ’48, that the next phase of the New Deal wouldn’t commence in splendid fashion? Who was to say that Roosevelt wasn’t a harbinger of more to come?
It was arguably these kinds of conflicting attitudes on the part of contemporary Democrats and Republicans that drew out the ratification process of the 22nd Amendment for the better part of four years. Republican antipathy towards Franklin Roosevelt in particular and the New Deal in general – a sentiment which had been building since at least the middle of the previous decade – was finally given an outlet in 1947 in the form of a constitutional amendment whose passage would serve as an implicit censure of the late President. By disallowing more than a single reelection, after all, wasn’t the amendment in question tacitly rebuking Roosevelt’s extended tenure in office? By securing its ratification, wouldn’t its supporters essentially gain the endorsement of the American public for a political principle which Franklin Roosevelt had just lately and spectacularly violated? And furthermore, by placing a codified limit upon how many times a single person could be elected to the office of President, weren’t the Republicans doing themselves the favor of preventing the emergence of another Roosevelt? It was already exceptionally likely that someone in the near future would attempt to gain the Democratic nomination, and then the presidency, by claiming to further Roosevelt’s legacy. Was it not preferable, when this outcome did eventually arrive, that the Democrat in question be forced to step down after two terms rather than continue in indefinitely? Bearing all of this in mind, it is truly little wonder that fully seventeen Republican-controlled state legislatures voted to ratify the relevant amendment within two months of its approval by Congress.
By the same token, when one takes account of the various sentiments likely circulating within the contemporary Democratic Party, it would seem equally easy to understand why the ratification process slowed down as much as it did. In Northern states where power was more or less evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, the prospect of ratifying the proposed term-limits amendment was bound to become a source of intense partisan conflict. Republicans were doubtless eager to offer a final rebuke to the memory of Roosevelt after having spent twelve years on the political backfoot while the New Deal transformed the country around them. And Democrats, their collective fortunes having turned for the better after decades spent in opposition, were undoubtedly just as keen to ensure that the last word on Franklin Roosevelt was not that his tenure in office had spurred a constitutional backlash. His administration, from their perspective, was about much more than merely its length. The whole idea of the 22nd Amendment, in consequence, arguably came down to question of mythmaking, of what Roosevelt would represent as the nation moved past the Great Depression and WWII. Both parties understandably had a vested interest in shaping the narrative in a particular way. And the result, no doubt, was a great deal of debate, and close votes, and horse-trading, all of which served to dramatically slow the process of ratification to a bare trickle for three years.
In the Southern states, of course, the whole notion of a term-limits amendment was just that much more fraught. The Republican Party may not have had the kind of political presence it did in the North, but Southern Democrats were themselves deeply divided on the subject of Roosevelt and his place in history. The man had done a great deal to increase the electoral viability of Democrats nationwide. And the various economic programs that he spearheaded had provided jobs and financial relief for literally millions of Southerners. He'd even elevated certain Southern statesmen to key positions in his administration. Tennessee Senator Cordell Hull (1871-1955) served as Secretary of State for eleven years between 1933 and 1944, South Carolinian Daniel Roper (1867-1943) had been successively an ambassador and then Secretary of Commerce, and Alabama Senator Hugo Black (1886-1971) had even been appointed to the Supreme Court. But Southern Democrats, by and large, tended to be ideologically conservative thinkers. And Roosevelt’s rapid expansion of the scope and power of the federal government just didn’t sit well with many conservative, hidebound, state-rights loving Southerners. The result, to be sure, within the legislatures of the various Southern states, was a sense of deep ambivalence about the proposed term-limits amendment. Many Southern Democrats had grown to deeply dislike President Roosevelt, particularly as he took to ignoring their ideologically motivated concerns. But the man had undeniably done a great deal to boost his party’s fortunes. And while many of these selfsame Southern legislators would surely have made public their continued reverence for the two-term precedent – in keeping with both their small-government bona fides and their admiration for its originator, fellow Southerner George Washington – a substantial number of them were surely capable of seeing the potential benefit of allowing a particularly popular public official to hold onto the office of President for an extended period of time. Bearing all of this in mind – along with the internal party debates that most likely resulted – it is perhaps not so surprising that, between 1947 and 1950, only four states out of the twenty-four that voted to ratify the 22nd Amendment were located in the American South.
As to whether the 22nd Amendment – according to the previously established metric – could best be described as either popular or institutional in its basic character, the answer would once more seem to locate itself somewhere in between. Contemporary American statesmen were most definitely the instigators and the primary drivers of the debate which eventually gave rise to the amendment in question. Granted, it was likely inevitable that Franklin Roosevelt’s decision to accept renomination in 1940 would go on to spark a discussion about the propriety of allowing a chief executive to serve more than two terms in office. But it was arguably Wendell Willkie, the Republican nominee for President, who made the idea of a constitutional amendment part of the mainstream public debate. Willkie’s successor, Thomas Dewey, then lent this same notion further credence during his own campaign in 1944, after which time contemporary Republican leadership opted to seize on the concept of a term-limited presidency as one of their central legislative goals heading into the 1946 mid-terms. The resulting congressional debate was likewise highly institutional in nature, being concerned primarily with legal definitions and potential contingencies. What seemed to matter, that is, more than how the amendment under discussion might conceivably affect the American people was how changing the nature of the presidency might result in unforeseen institutional complications.
All that being said, it wasn’t as though the American people remained indifferent throughout this process. Though neither Willkie nor Dewey managed to rally the electorate sufficiently to dethrone Roosevelt in 1940 or 1944, their attempts to draw attention to the supposed need for a constitutional amendment limiting the number of terms a given individual could serve as President undeniably had an effect on contemporary public opinion. As the cited Gallup polling shows, the American people grew steadily more amenable to the idea of just such an amendment as Roosevelt’s third term in office progressed between 1941 and 1945. The fact that the Republican Party then made the adoption of a term-limits amendments one of its primary objectives in 1946 – and that they then proceeded to take back Congress for the first time in fourteen years – would likewise seem to speak to the growing popularity of the idea. Obviously, the Republican leadership would not have adopted such a tack had they not had cause to believe that the public would responded favorably. And while there were certainly a great many reasons why, after over a decade of Democratic dominance, the American people might have had cause to reconsider the party’s future in government – from labor strikes to lingering price controls to flat-out partisan fatigue – Roosevelt’s legacy as the first three-term President arguably drew all of these threads together.
After all, by remaining in power for so long, and by making such drastic changes to the scope and power of the federal government, hadn’t Franklin Roosevelt essentially set the table for the strife which erupted after his death in ’45? The man had, to be sure, done a great deal to help the country through both the worst economic crisis in its history and the most destructive war in its history. But by 1946, wasn’t it all starting to fall apart? The labor unions he had empowered were now using that power to paralyze the economy. The price controls he had instituted were actively hampering the prospects of American businesses. From the perspective of the American voter, perhaps the bloom was beginning to come off the once-vaunted Roosevelt rose. And so, in response to Republican promises that no one would ever be permitted to partake of such an extended tenure in office again, the people gave them the mandate that they had sought for so long. Were it not for the fact that both houses of Congress were popularly elected, one wonders if this transaction would ultimately have taken place. That is, absent popular pressure on the Senate, it would not seem to be a guarantee that the membership of that chamber would have taken up the question of presidential terms limits so quickly and with such ardor.
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