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Let's go back to the cliché: power is often an aphrodisiac for those who seek it. Again, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The corruption is much more than bad behaviour in the financial or social or political sense. It is a state of mind, an ailment which has afflicted countless monarchs, politicians and their hangers-on throughout history. Few have the grace to turn their backs on power or walk gracefully away from the glory which power dangles before them.
Think of Donald Trump. In these early days in his second term as President of the United States, he has already fallen for the temptation of imagining a third term in the White House beginning January 2029. In that winter a new President, in the constitutional sense of the meaning, will be sworn in. But Trump being Trump, he has political experts in America and beyond America worried about his intentions come November 2028. Recall the desperate measures he adopted to hang on to power when he was defeated by Joe Biden in 2020.
It is that same desperation beginning to rear its head in spring 2025. But the reality today is different. The 22nd amendment to the US Constitution, approved by Congress in 1947 and ratified by the country's constituent states in 1951, does not permit an individual to be President for more than two terms, meaning eight years. The amendment came in the aftermath of the twelve years in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt served as President from 1933 to 1945. By the time he died in April 1945, FDR had been elected to a fourth term. Had he lived he would have been in the White House till January 1949. Roosevelt's long presidency went against the convention set by America's founding fathers, especially George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who believed that two terms for a President ought to be the limit.
The 22nd amendment also made it clear that a President who has succeeded his elected predecessor and has completed two years of the term the latter would have served cannot go for a second term of his own. That provision of the Constitution created a situation where Vice President Harry Truman assumed office as President after FDR's death and, being in the White House for nearly the four years in which FDR would have been President, sought election in his own right in 1948. Truman defeated New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey and went on to serve as President till January 1953, when he was succeeded by Dwight Eisenhower.
In recent times, Vice President Gerald Ford, elevated to the presidency following the resignation of President Richard Nixon in August 1974, was able to win the Republican nomination for President in 1976 because he had served for fewer than two years in the White House by the time the election took place. Ford of course lost to Jimmy Carter, but in 1980, when Ronald Reagan was anointed the Republican presidential nominee, Ford expected to be Reagan's vice presidential running mate. That did not happen, of course, since Reagan chose George HW Bush as his running mate. The point here, though, is that if fortune had favoured him, Ford would be Vice President a second time and would likely win the White House in his own right at the 1988 election.
In early 1968, buffeted by Vietnam and a strong showing by Senator Eugene McCarthy at the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary, President Lyndon Johnson decided not to seek or accept the nomination of the Democratic Party for a second term in the White House. Johnson, who succeeded the assassinated President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, was elected President in his own right a year later in November 1964. He therefore was constitutionally possessed of the right to seek a second term, but did not or would not.
Which brings us back to Trump's ambitions for a third term. For him to stand for a third term would require Congress to approve a change in the law, doing away with the two-term provision. Once that is done, 38 of America's 50 states would need to ratify the new amendment. None of this is likely, given the political permutations and combinations in which America operates at present. One scenario being talked about at present, though not with much conviction, is for Vice President JD Vance to be the Republican presidential nominee, with Trump as his vice presidential running mate, in 2028. If and when Vance is elected President, he will resign in a few days and hand over the presidency to Vice President Trump. Trump will thus be inducted into a third term as President.
There are two problems with such a notion. In the first place, assuming that in such a scenario Vance is elected President, why should he feel any necessity to keep the seat warm for Vice President Trump and then hand power over to him? Elected Presidents will always be loath to give away their office voluntarily to their deputies. In the second place, with the Constitution specifically blocking a third term for a President who has already served two terms and with the 12th amendment to the Constitution ensuring that a President who has served two terms in the White House is ineligible to take office as Vice President, Trump's ambitions are up against an insurmountable roadblock.
Politics is generally a matter of ambition for many in the profession. Many have been the individuals in American politics who have for ages sought the presidency but have fallen by the wayside. There have been men like Nixon, who sought power for years, came by it but then lost it in scandal. Remember the politically astute Hillary Clinton, an individual prepared and qualified to be President but lost the race in 2016. The stories go on and on.
There has been no one like Donald Trump, though. In America you go by the Constitution. Presidents do not hold on to power through states of emergency or martial law. Street demonstrations have never forced a President or government from office. Political leaders do not violate the Constitution as a way of claiming or gaining power. The system of checks and balances ensures constitutional continuity.
Such continuity is a check on men and women in whom unbridled ambition could threaten the rule of law. In America, a presidential third term for an occupant of the White House is therefore an impossibility. Trump's presidency will draw to a close on January 20, 2029.