Franklin D. Roosevelt had 4 terms, was this due to the war or why he had 4 term's?

Question

Will the DECIDER(G.W.BUSH) try and seek a 3rd term as he can "DECIDE" whats best for the country? What a scarey thought!

Well to answer the ("stoopid") answer that was given, a man of his stature was surely a prime example of why america "WAS" a country which people could look at as more than just freedom; "PROUD" is a single word which all can look at as all to be!
My point in asking the question is to view many different aspects to his achievment!

PS. thank god for the 22nd amendmant!

Answer 1

At that time there was no rule limiting a president to 2 terms. It was just a tradition after G Washington declined to run for third term. The law limiting the president to two terms came into being in in March of 1947, after Franklin D. Roosevelt died.

Answer 2

He won mainly because the other candidates didn't look that great and the war going on in Europe and people thought he was doing an okay job of things.

During the 1940 election, he stressed that he would keep the US out of the war.

Bush cannot run for a 3rd term because after FDR's time, they passed an Amendment to limit Presidents to 2 terms.

Edit: The person above who claimed that the unemployment rate during FDR's terms was 0% is just being silly.

Answer 3

It was not due to the war. He won his third term in 1940, a year before the U.S. entered the war. He was elected a 4th time in 1944, but died while in office in 1945.

Apparently, the American People loved being in a Depression more than the surviving people from that time are letting on. FDR had no clue how to get the country out of the Great Depression, which covered the entire first two and a half of his terms. But America kept re-electing him in spite of experiencing the worst economy in history.

Answer 4

Term limits imposed by the 22nd Ammendment (passed during FDR's term in office, but exempting him from the limits) prevent anyone else from holding the office of President of the United States for more than two terms.

Prior to the 22nd Ammendment, there were no term limits although it was traditional that no President would serve more than two terms. It was passed largely due to FDR's unprecedented 3rd and 4th terms of office.

A Vice President who serves less than half of the remaining term of a President who does not complete his term of office (such as LBJ when he became President after JFK's assassination in 1963) is eligible to serve two full terms in addition to the partial term.

For GW Bush to serve another term, it would take another Ammendment to the Constitution. Any such Ammendment (though one has never been seriously proposed even by the most ardent Bush supporters -- probably because it would apply to Bill Clinton as well. LOL!) would almost certainly exclude the current President and likely require him to skip a term to be eligible again.

Bush can "decide" all that he wants but in January, 2007 he will leave the White House forever. (Thank God!)

Answer 5

For one, he can't, thank God. The reason why Frank got 4 terms was out of the fact that he was a great president, the same reason why Cleveland got 4 terms (non-consecutive, though). He ended the depression, he went after who attacked America (hint, hint), and more importantly, didn't put the US in peril and doom. Plus, it was legal, for all those history addicts. The 22nd amendment was made especially for presidents like Cleveland and Roosevelt who made it to the oval office 4 times.

Answer 6

FDR was elected to all of his terms because he was wildly popular. However, due to fears that a president could garner almost unlimited power if they kept getting elected over and over (and would effectively become a "benevolant dictator"), the Constitution was amended (the 22nd amendment) to limit the president to two terms. A president with that much power would have (could have) greatly upset the separation of powers our government was founded on.

Were Bush to stay in power after his term was over, the Constitution would have had to have been amended in some way, or he would have been able to change the way our country is governed...oh, wait, we *are* talking about Bush here, I suppose it's not out of the question...

According to the Constitution, Shrub is out after his two terms.

Answer 7

Bush can not run for a third term, In order for a person to serve more than two terms as President, the 22nd Amendment would have to be repealed by another Constitutional Amendment. They do not want to give someone to much power for too long.

The first President of the United States, George Washington, only served two terms despite being very popular. Like many things that he did during his time in office, Washington set a precedent that Presidents "should" only serve two four-year terms. Remember that Washington and others were wary of a President who became so strong that they became like a king. So for 150 years no President served more than two terms in office. In 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt decided to run for an unprecedented third term as President. Roosevelt was very popular at the time and he believed that it was necessary for him to run for a third term because of the domestic (the U.S. economy was still recovering from the Great Depression) and international (Germany had invaded Poland in 1939 starting World War II) situations. In 1944, Roosevelt again ran for re-election (The U.S. was now an active combatant in World War II) and won. FDR died in 1945 before he could complete his fourth term in office.The U.S. Congress (with a majority of Republicans in both Houses) on March 21, 1947 proposed a Constitutional Amendment to limit a President's term in office. The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution which limited a person to two four-year terms as President (this Amendment did not apply to the sitting President at the time, Harry S. Truman, since it would have been retroactive) was ratified on February 27, 1951. Also, a President that came to office in order to complete a term of his predecessor could serve only one full four-year term, if he served more than two years of his predecessor's term). Since the 22nd Amendment was passed in 1951, some people have called for it's repeal since they wanted a popular two-term President (Eisenhower, Reagan, Clinton) to be able to run again. Supporters of repealing the 22nd Amendment argue that a President automatically becomes a "lame duck" once he or she is elected to a second term. They argue that a popular President should be allowed to serve if he/she is continually elected. In the 1990s there was a term-limit movement which sought to limit U.S. Congressmen to a certain number of terms in office.

Answer 8

Well, it's no longer possible to have a third term president. It's been written into law. Thank God, right?! FDR's 4 terms was in part because of the war and the situation the country was in during the time of his presidency.

Answer 9

Since this was more of an editorial in the form of a question -- as what many in this forum think is true intellectual discourse -- perhaps a true power-grabbing issue should be mentioned in relation to FDR.... three words: "court packing plan".
Now that is a truly "scarey" thought.

Answer 10

Roosevelt's successor Harry Truman was president when the term limits were set to two terms