As I sat trying
to think of a new topic to blog about I happened to overhear a conversation
about Obama running for a 3rd term and a young man telling his friends that he
(Obama) wanted to be the first president to do it. The list of problems with
this statement was so long it took everything in me not to walk up to the young
man no more than 20 years of age and slap him so hard he ended up back in his
high school government class where he belonged. Luckily for me the young man's
friend looked at him and informed him of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's
election to a fourth and unfinished term. This second young man continued to
tell his unbelieving friend that it was shortly after that in which congress
passed a constitutional amendment which limited the number of terms a president
could serve. The first young man responded that "he's gonna try it
anyway." at this point I placed my headphones on my ears and ignored the
rest of the conversation.
This is precisely
the reason I launched this blog there I was sitting in Ohio University
Chillicothe, and still misunderstandings of this magnitude are all around us.
For the record and according to heritage.org in response to F.D.R.'s
unprecedented four elected terms the U.S. Congress passed the twenty-second
amendment in 1947 which limits each President to two elected terms or in some
case's such as my favorite President, Harry S Truman who served all but three
months of FDR's fourth term as President due to the untimely death of his
predecessor. Under the new requirements anyone serving more than two years of
an unexpired term forfeits one elected term. Pres. Truman therefore having
served three years and nine months of an unexpired term was technically
disqualified from a second elected term. Special thanks to Great Grandma
Truman's family records and trumanlittlewhitehouse.com for the information on
Pres. Truman. also one last item according to whitehouse.gov and heritage.org
Truman did have the option to run for a second elected term as the
twenty-second amendment says that it
"shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when
this Article was proposed by Congress." which basically means that the
rule only applies to people elected after Truman. I used Truman as my example
simply because of my personal connection with him.
Works Cited