One of President Donald Trump’s unsung accomplishments is not merely inducing his opponents to overreact but conducting their hysteria with the precision of a maestro. One of these movements came recently as the Senate Democrats resurrected the prospects of President Trump serving a third term in office. But their symphony of discontent clashes with notes struck by presidents and congressional leaders of both parties — including some of those attacking President Trump themselves.
Democrats continually plow land the president seeded by trolling them about running for a third term. In April, he told NBC he could serve another four years as president, if he runs for vice president and his short-term successor resigns. Two months earlier, he tweaked the Left with talk of a third term at a Black History Month event. The moral panic appears to have begun when reporters pounced on his stray use of the phrase “third term” at last year’s NRA convention, touching off a round of ritual denunciations.
Double Standards for Democrats
“This man does not believe in the Constitution! He wants to be a dictator! This is a dangerous human being!” Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., told MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart last May.
But Waters sang a different tune a few years earlier, when asked whether Congress should repeal the Twenty-Second Amendment.
“We should take a look at how we can get rid of that part of the Constitution,” said Waters during a 2004 episode of CNN’s Crossfire about President Bill Clinton. “It’s an artificial way to try and change leadership,” she told co-host Tucker Carlson.
Numerous members of both parties have done more than talk, well before Clinton’s presidency. Harry Reid proposed a constitutional amendment to repeal the Twenty-Second Amendment days after Ronald Reagan left office. Mitch McConnell and Steny Hoyer would follow suit before Clinton’s departure — in 1995 and 1997, respectively. Then-Congressman José Serrano, D-N.Y., introduced a bill to repeal presidential term limits every two years between Clinton’s re-election and the first day Congress held session under Barack Obama. (His civic-mindedness apparently ended with the first Trump administration.)
Enough for George Washington Is Enough for Anyone
Of course, the 47th president has carefully disavowed talk of a third term each time he stoked speculation — perhaps because he knows how it polls. Most Americans want term limits for Congress, not unlimited terms for presidents. If two terms in office was enough for George Washington, it should suffice for anyone.
The president likely invites conjecture about a third term 1) because it amuses him and 2) because Trump the deal-maker knows he has more leverage if he is not perceived as a lame duck. He foresees the Left will magnify such comments to portray him as an incipient dictator. Although the American people have repeatedly shown they do not buy this narrative, the Democrats keep playing their losing role in a symbiotic game of 4-D chess.
But if President Trump really harbors not-so-suppressed desires to serve a third term, it would not exactly break norms. Wishing to stay in power is the most normal emotion in Washington. In fact, nearly every president of the last 40 years felt the same way.
Bill Clinton Speculated About it
In May 2003, Bill Clinton proposed, like Maxine Waters, that the Constitution “should probably be modified to say [a president can serve] two consecutive terms instead of two terms for a lifetime, because we’re all living longer. There may come a time when we elect a president at age 45 or 50, and then 20 years later the country comes up with the same sort of problems that the president faced before and the people would like to bring that man or woman back, and they’d have no ability to do so.”
The Left did not revolt when Clinton, who became president at age 47, echoed Woody Allen’s interpretation of Socrates:
Allen: I guess I should never have suggested having a philosopher-king.
Simmias: Especially when you kept pointing to yourself and clearing your throat.
Reagan Opposed Presidential Term Limits
In 1989, President Ronald Reagan vowed to “mobilize the people to demand the repeal of [the Twenty-Second] amendment. It is an invasion of their democratic rights to vote for whoever they want to vote for and for however long.” The Gipper said he waited until he was “out of office so that they can’t accuse me of wanting to do it for myself.” However, his supporters, including the late talk show host Morton Downey Jr., floated the same plan for Reagan in 1988 as Trump’s do now.
George H.W. Bush could not win a second term, and George W. Bush’s historically low approval ratings made a third term unthinkable. Instead, his political machine tried to elect a third Bush in 2016.
Obama mused about staying in office before and after the 2016 presidential election. The media did not hyperventilate about foreign meddling in Our DemocracyTM when Canadian MPs greeted Obama’s last speech on Parliament Hill with a rousing chant of “four more years!” Of course, Obama famously said he would love to have “a stand-in, a front man … and then I could deliver the lines, but somebody else was doing all the talking.”
All of President Trump’s stream-of-consciousness statements combined have hurt America less than Obama’s undeclared third term — or the Left’s demonizing, hysterical, hypocritical commentary about them.
The V. Rev. Ben Johnson (@therightswriter) is an Eastern Orthodox priest and commentator for such outlets as the The Daily Wire, The Acton Institute, the Family Research Council, LifeSiteNews, and FrontPageMag.com. He is the author of three books, including Party of Defeat (with David Horowitz, 2008). His views are his own.
