Tethered Swimming

“Demand?  Who are you to demand anything?  I run this town!  You’re just a bunch of low-income nobodies!” - Mayor Quimby

“Uh…election in November…election in November…” - Mayor’s Aide

“What, again?  This stupid country…” - Mayor Quimby

I voted for Bill Clinton in 2000.  I had to write in his name, but of all the people in this country, he was the only one whom I was comfortable with occupying 1600.  Of course, Clinton wasn’t running for office in 2000.  Despite being relatively young and quite popular, Al Gore was the Democratic candidate.  This is like benching your starting quarterback for the Super Bowl.[1]

It would’ve been a hell of a campaign with tremendous storylines: the son rising up against the man who dethroned his father, a referendum on the world’s most famous blowjob, a choice on two very different foreign policy theories, etcetera.  It is too often lost amidst the hullabaloo that went down in Florida, but the actual 2000 campaign was a very humdrum affair.

Whatever else you can say about Clinton, he was popular; his approval ratings were in the high fifties and low sixties in the summer of 2000.  That popularity baffled a lot of people, but it can’t be denied.[2]  Real conservatives would’ve welcomed the idea of running against Clinton with someone other than a decent but geriatric Kansas senator.

I’m almost certain that Clinton would’ve won and I think the ghost of Lee Atwater would agree with me.  11 September 2001 may or may not have passed without the World Trade Center falling down, but either way our world would be a vastly different place right now.  Clinton might have embraced the added powers of the USA Patriot Act, but he certainly wouldn’t have opened a prison in Cuba or invaded Iraq.  Who knows what the issues in 2004 would’ve been?  If just Guantanamo and Iraq were different the lives of millions of people would be demonstrably better.

The Twenty-Second Amendment prevents anyone from being elected President more than twice.  It was passed by Congress in 1947 and ratified in 1951.  It was a reaction to the record breaking presidency of Franklin Roosevelt.  He was elected in 1932 during the deepest days of the Depression and won his unprecedented third term in 1940, before the US got into the war.  (The attack on Pearl Harbor occurred a mere 87 days deeper into Roosevelt’s third term than the Trade Center attack would’ve been into a third Clinton term.)  By the time 1944 rolled around the war was going very well for the Allies, but Roosevelt’s health was far worse than was publicly known.

The big players in the Democratic Party knew Roosevelt was unlikely to survive his fourth term.  When they settled on Harry Truman as the vice-presidential candidate (Roosevelt’s third) they were aware that they were selecting a president.  It was a pretty sleazy move, one worthy of a large and all but invincible political machine.  Later discomfort with that decision and a general feeling of unease over how Roosevelt had lingered in office led directly to the Twenty-Second.

Let’s run down the presidents since it was ratified.  Truman had only been elected once (in the “Give ‘em Hell Harry” election of 1948), so he could’ve run in 1952 if he wanted to, but he didn’t (the Korean War was the main issue and Truman had taken a lot of heat for his handling of it).  Eisenhower could’ve run again in 1960, he didn’t die until 1969, but his health was declining (he had a heart attack during his first term) and he seemed eager to be rid of office.  Kennedy was, obviously, assassinated.  Johnson voluntarily declined to run in 1968 because he knew he’d lose.  Nixon was impeached and resigned two and a half years before his second term expired.  Carter lost in 1980.  Reagan’s popularity was in decline leading up to the 1988 election (this rarely gets remembered) and he was already visibly suffering from what we later learned was Alzheimer’s.  Bush the Elder lost in 1992.  Clinton was the first to really be effected.

This is not some liberal fantasy trying to make the nightmare of the Bush Administration go away the same way regular nightmares do.  If Clinton hadn’t been prohibited from running in 2000, we would’ve had a direct way to take him to task, or not, for his dalliance.  We’d have a resolution far more final than wondering if Gore could’ve won if he’d let Clinton loose on the campaign trail.  Even if Bush the Younger took office in 2000 by beating Clinton, he’d currently be deciding if he could or should run in 2008 instead of running out the clock and promising to dump his messes on his successor.

There is an honest case to be made for term limits in other, less scrutinized, offices but it just doesn’t make sense for the presidency.  Legislators, mayors, judges, governors et al can slink by without garnering too much attention if they so desire.  Corruption and stalemate result.  The presidency has a far brighter spotlight on it.  The citizenry can be trusted to throw out a bum president far better than we can be trusted to throw out a bum congressman or state legislator.

Finding a decent occupant of that office is really hard; judging from the forty-three examples so far, the odds are less than 50-50 that we’ll get someone we’re proud of twenty years after the fact.  Why on Earth would we disqualify someone who has held the office successfully for eight years?

The Twenty-Second Amendment was designed to protect us from a demagogue eternally dominating our political scene.  It was a bad idea and the reality has been far different.  Instead it protects second term incumbents from us, not the other way around.  The Law of Unintended Consequences, as it is known to do, came down from up on high and had us all once again.

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[1] I’m assuming here that Clinton would’ve wanted to run.  At his age, with his vigor and intelligence, I can’t believe he would’ve turned down the chance.

[2] A whole other set of people have had the exact same experience with his successor.