American History Hit - The Truth about the Two-Term Limit

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

The two-term limit, the idea that the President of the United States may not seek a third term, has a long history. Originating from a decision made by George Washington, it quickly became an established political norm in America. Since then however it has transformed from a political expectation to a constitutionally mandated practice... but why?Our guest today is historian and Professor Jeremi Suri of the University of Texas at Austin, author works including ‘Civil War By Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy.’Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Produced by Tom Delargy. Senior Producer is Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. It's the sweltering summer, July 1940, here at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The noise is deafening, with bands blaring, delegates shouting, banners aloft.

But beneath the celebration is a deep current of anxiety. Once again, the world is at war. France has fallen. London is burning. And today, in this overheated hall, an American tradition is about to fall. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR, who has already served two full terms in office, is not present today. For months, he has said almost nothing about running again. No declaration, no denial. But everyone here understands the reality.

The Democratic Party has no alternative. No other nominee is equal to this moment. But when the count is in and the nomination decided, it feels hardly like victory and more like a summons. Roosevelt makes his sober acceptance, not from the convention floor, but over the radio. His voice, now so familiar to Americans, is steady, restrained. He speaks of duty, of crisis, of a world that cannot abide hesitation. His nomination, he insists, is no rejection of tradition.

It is a response to catastrophe. For 150 years, no president has crossed this line. A two-term rule was never written into the Constitution, but it was none other than George Washington who set the limit. This is unwritten law, now being weighed against the fear and faith of a single man. Hey, everybody, I'm Don Wilden, your host of American history hit. Stepping into what is now our fourth year of this podcast series, and for this we credit you, our listeners. We're here because of you, so happy New Year and thank you very much. Since the beginning of this nation, the most dynamic and consequential force in our national government has been the presidency.

Of course, constitutionally, the success of our federal system rests with the balance of our three branches of power. But time and again, it has been the executive branch that is least constrained by the limits laid out by our founders. So, given the opportunity for better and worse, American presidents have tested those limits repeatedly, expanding the reach and influence of the office through so many moments of crisis, conflict, and change, and so often without real penalty or price. Yet one restraint still holds, one rule passed in the middle of the last century, still places a hard boundary around presidential power. The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, limits presidents to two elected terms in office. Born in the lengthy shadow of FDR, it was a direct response to the unprecedented scale and duration of his presidency,

elected four times, served 12 years before he died. But most broadly, the 22nd addressed the great and timeless American question. How much power is too much for one person to hold? And we have the fortunate opportunity to discuss the 22nd Amendment with Professor Jeremy Surrey, who has joined us several times on this series. He is an historian at the University of Texas at Austin, the 40 acres. where he is a leading scholar of modern politics, foreign policy, and presidential power, having authored and edited numerous books, including Civil War by Other Means, America's Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy.

Greetings, good, sir. Let's kick off with presidential power seems only fitting. Hello, Jeremy. Nice to see you, Don. The two-term presidency. This discussion is so often in the news today, it feels like current events. But the 22nd doesn't happen until 1951. There's a massive history behind this subject that will break down into three parts. The origin and early practice of presidential power right up to when the great unwritten rule was finally broken and then why. And then we'll discuss the amendment's effect, its legacy and what it's left us. The thing itself is short and sweet, and we'll read it later on.

But to start, we'll go back to the early republic. Why were the founders so anxious about executive power in the first place? Well, the founders had lived through monarchy. And they were very concerned about what they called the arbitrariness of an individual who has power over a society. They were also concerned about legislatures, too. They were angry about the behavior of parliament and they were angry about the behavior of a king. So they were trying to find in building a republic some alternative or some way to limit the power of a monarch in particular, which is why they created a president, not a king. They also recognized, however, that a country needed an executive of some kind.

Right. I mean, in so many ways, the United States of America was designed as a system of liberty, absolute liberty, individual rights, leave us alone. But the practicalities of running a nation caused the need for a leader and leadership. And that's going to be that threatening person at the top who is going to grow beyond the powers that they want. They had fought a revolution steeped in enlightenment ideas of freedom, self-determination, and republicanism. That's what I'm referring to. And in doing so over through the tyrant, they identified as the source of that kind of power. So now they're going to start looking for ways to mitigate that in any kind of leader that we have. What was George Washington's motivations for voluntarily stepping down from office? That's so much the model of what we're going to be talking about that lasts for 150 years. There was no limit on him taking another term and one after that. And yet he voluntarily did so quite consciously, correct? Yes, that's absolutely true. Let's just take it back a little bit at the constitutional Convention, there was a debate about whether to create a term limit. There was also a debate,

of course, about how long the term should be. There was one proposal for a seven-year presidency without renewal, something similar to what countries like Mexico and France have, although in France, I think you can run again. And so there was quite a debate about this in the 18th century. The founders ended up really not agreeing. And so they created a four-year term. The presumption was, and this is where George Washington comes in. The presumption was that whoever served in this role would only do it for a short time. The founders were deep believers that public service was not a profession. Public service was a calling for a specific period. And their model was just what Washington represented, that you would be a farmer who would leave your farm to go and fight a war,

come back to your farm, and then maybe you would leave your farm to serve in public office, but then come back to your farm, which of course is exactly what Washington did. Washington was self conscious that he wanted this model to be embedded in American tradition, and he was creating that tradition. And then I must also say that after eight years as president, he was tired of it. He really did not enjoy the job. And so he really wanted to leave. Right. And before that, he'd fought a war for many years. And so the man was exhausted. But it's important to underscore how deliberate this was and how articulated was. He uses the phrase, the term, ambitious and unprincipled men in his farewell address, who will seek to subvert the power of the people for their own ends.

Wait, you can take anything of these days and sort of extrapolate from it, but you take that little phrase, and you realize so much of the philosophy that's behind the United States and the creation of the power system that we live beneath. There was such deep fear. But it was also a more positive notion that if we could possibly create leadership that was limited, then the people would grow into that vacuum that was there, right? Yes, the founding fathers were ambitious people, but they reviled the public display of ambition. You were to be called to office, sort of as you are called to the priesthood. And you were to serve while that calling was in place and then return to public life. They associated public ambition with corruption. And it's interesting, Don, that remains the presumption in the U.S. for a long time. It's really not until the 20th century that people campaigned for president. You were not supposed to do that. You were not supposed to appear too desirous of the office. Exactly. In subsequent years after

Washington's terms, how did the presidents that follow deal with this? Did they reiterate his claim? We're talking about Adams and Jefferson here. Yes, they did. And there was a presumption that a successful president would serve for two terms. So the fact that Adams was not reelected was quite an insult to him. And he took it that way very personally. But there was also the presumption that, two terms would be the limit. Jefferson never considered a third term. Madison and Monroe never considered third terms. And that was because this was the presumption of what an executive should do. There were differences over policy details. And Washington's successors, Jefferson in particular, did form parties. Washington's farewell address also criticizes the idea of parties. So they didn't

do everything Washington said, but they clearly believed that he was right and that that model was something almost an informal part of the Constitution, maybe not written in the parchment, but an informal assumption. It's such a fascinating period, the early republic, because it's so defined by that understanding and study of what federal power really means, you know, basically one-party system, the federalists, and they are very concerned with how to define this at that time. It's really interesting. Later on, now, we'll talk a lot about FDR and that specific challenge that happens then, but the idea of a third term comes along way before that. I mean, specifically around the Civil War.

Absolutely. I mean, Ulysses Grant is really the first serious case of this. There is talk of a third term around Andrew Jackson, too, by the way. But it doesn't go very far because Jackson makes it quite clear that this is not any interest he has in a third term. But one could imagine in a different scenario where Andrew Jackson, because of the core popularity he had, particularly with Western settlers, that he could have become a three-term president, but he chose not to, which is really. interesting. A few of the presidencies that follow are virtually third terms for him in many cases. You could argue Martin Van Buren was his third term in some of that made that that case, though,

as quickly happened, Jackson was unhappy with Martin Van Buren. Again, that's another story. In the case of Ulysses Grant, Grant, of course, was the great hero of the Union Army. He was elected in 1868 and served from 1869 to 1877, and then left office really exhausted, not seen as a successful president at all, especially in his second term, for reasons surrounding the revolt against reconstruction, corruption, various issues, also a major economic downturn in 1873. So this was a failed presidency in his second term in the eyes of many. But then in 1880, there was talk of Grant coming back, and there's evidence that Grant himself was considering coming back for two reasons. First of all, he didn't know what to do with himself.

Second, he needed the money. Grant had mismanaged his finances. He was a brilliant military strategist. It turns out, as we do more research on him, we learn also he was a deep believer in civil rights. There were many good things about Grant. And in the last 10 years, historians have brought more of that out. But one good thing you cannot find is the management of finances. This was a man who was not personally corrupt, but personally incompetent in the management of finances.

And he needed something else. And supporters offered him support financing to run again to put his name in as the Republican candidate. And if he had been elected, he would have actually had a salary then. It turns out he doesn't. And he writes his memoirs, which are still the best memoirs written by any politician in American history. And he wrote them. So at the end of his life, he'd have some money to leave his. wife and Mark Twain helped him with that.

But there was a lot of momentum about getting him back into office. It turns out to be Hayes instead of him. But that's the time that we're talking about. Woodrow Wilson, I was surprised, even considered this virtually Moribut. I mean, he is suffering the effects of a huge stroke. The man will die, you know, a year after he wanted to get this third term. Teddy Roosevelt tries to run for a third term as an independent. He creates what's called the Bull Moose Party.

What was the difference in his situation? So Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901 after the assassination of William McKinley, who was serving the beginning of his second term. And Theodore Roosevelt serves that term, the rest of McKinley's elected term from 1901 to 1905. And then in 1904, he's elected to his first term as an elected president, which becomes the first and a half term of his time in office. He leaves office then in 1909 when he decides to run again in 1912. When he runs in 1912, he's claiming that he'd only been elected once. He had served part of someone else's term, but he'd only been elected once. And so his claim was that he wasn't breaking the Washington rule. Now, no one had served more than eight years in office. And if he had been elected,

Roosevelt, in 1912, he would have then ended up serving 11 years in office. But he claimed he was still running only for the second time. And so it's different from Washington, but he did not depict it as rejecting Washington's encouragement to only run for two terms. Woodrow Wilson, considering a third term, was clearly, first of all, it was crazy because, as you said, he was incapacitated, but also it was crazy because that would have gone directly in violation of Washington's victim. Yeah. So for 150 years in this country, the two-term limit is not law, but the good faith that leaders will show restraint and act accordingly, basically act like George Washington. That was the idea.

So let's take a short break. We talked about a lot here, and we'll come back and confront the moment of political brinksmanship when Washington's rule is finally broken. Hello, and we're back with Professor Jeremy Surrey. The first half of the 20th century, the American century, so often called, was so much havoc in the world at large and at home. First World War, roaring 20s, all followed by the Great Depression. And that's just the United States.

And it is against that bleak economic backdrop and because of it that we see the rise of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his arrival in the White House, 1933. He's inaugurated for what will be a presidency like no other. So let's touch on the impact Roosevelt had on the office itself and the nation. He comes into power at one of the darkest periods of this nation. Yeah, that's right. I mean, the United States, in 1933, the unemployment rate is above 25%, and that's in households that generally have one income earner. And where there are in very few states, is there any kind of unemployment benefit? So many families, as many as a quarter of American families, are literally without income and without a source of food. Thousands and thousands of people use it losing their farms because of the terrible drought and terrible conditions from over farms. This is the dust bowl. And you have a country where people are literally starving to death. Now, this is not unique to the United States. One can argue the Great Depression, in a sense,

comes out of the American economy and is spread to the world. But these are the conditions that are being confronted by citizens in Europe and elsewhere at this moment. When Roosevelt comes into office, it's the same year that Adolf Hitler comes into power. It's the same time that Mussolini is in power in Italy. This is a moment when authoritarian are on the rise because of publics that are looking for someone to save them. Yeah, there's a lot of negativity about FDR's presidency from the conservatives of this country. I am, I feel fortunate to be my age because I was raised by Depression era parents whose entire outlook on life was because of the depression. I mean, the things we ate, the way we spent our money, everything about the culture that

my parents grew up and was what I learned from. And it really did shape this country because it was such a brutal time to go through. It's so scary. An existential crisis in every way for the American dream, you know. It was a desperate time. They needed decisive, strong leadership. This came after the laissez-faire period, certainly the gilded age into the early 20th century. But while in office, Roosevelt expands the presidency and redefines what Americans would think of their president, what they expect of that office. How is this done? Spoiler, New Deal. Exactly. And the New Deal is more than a set of policies, which is my spoiler alert to your spoiler alert. The New Deal begins with a different image for the presidency. And it's so ironic because, as I'm

sure all your listeners know, Franklin Roosevelt couldn't walk. But yet he creates the image self-consciously of a president who's not distant and detached from the world, as presidents were, as Washington was, but a president who is deeply engaged, not just in what's happening in the country, but what's happening in your neighborhood, in your home, people like your parents would recount in oral histories repeatedly that Franklin Roosevelt was not just a president. He was a father figure for them, a father figure. I love, there's so many of these stories. I love the story of Saul Bellow. I quote this in one of my books. Saul Bello was the child of Russian immigrants to the United States. He had to leave college because he couldn't afford to pay.

He had no job. And he describes walking through Chicago and hearing Roosevelt's voice on the radios of people's cars as they were driving. And he said, for the first time in my life, this guy with this strange accent, he spoke to me. I never thought Herbert Hoover cared about me. This man cared about me. The radio, Don, the earlier version of what we're doing now, Roosevelt's voice and a self-conscious effort to turn the presidency from a kind of managerial executive job into a personal job. And Roosevelt had such skill with that. He conveyed empathy. He conveyed humanity.

And most of us as historians have come to the conclusion, I think you have to come to, that he learned this from the years he had suffering polio from polio and living in Warm Springs, Georgia, with other poor people. He was very rich. but with poor people who were suffering from this horrible disease, he learned how to talk to them, not as an aristocrat, which he was, but as an ordinary man, but a father figure. And so that's the biggest shift that occurs. And then the policies follow from that. I mean, what people forget today is image has to have reality behind it. The image doesn't last. The spectacle doesn't last without the actual policy behind it very long. Roosevelt followed this up by turning

the government from an organization that was distant into the organization that kept you alive, that gave you a job, that provided you with electricity. So it is things like the Works Progress Administration that puts people to work, such as Ronald Reagan's father. It is organizations like the rural electrification agency that bring electricity, turning the lights on Lyndon Johnson said, in central Texas, where he grew up. He comes into people's lives, uses the federal government to provide them with assistance and with hope. They don't become rich overnight, but they come to believe that they are not falling into an abyss

as Americans felt they were, as you described so well, Don, before Roosevelt's election. Right. It's the innovations that define FDR, technological innovation of radio, of course, which his charisma is suited to so well, but also the innovations of governance and using the federal government as a large platform upon which to build, rebuild a nation.

And that means a lot of agencies, a lot of new buildings. Boy, you see Washington, D.C. just change, you know, under those Roosevelt years, becoming much more like Paris. I mean, way bigger buildings going on there. And through all these steps, the nations, you know, move slowly back. It's argued how effectively that was done. And the lasting effect of that larger government, of course. But by 1936, he is reelected in a landslide. And no one really talks that much about his second term because it precedes the big one of World War II.

But this is when everything is starting to happen in the world like this. You know, we're climbing out of the Great Depression, so is a lot of the rest of the world. And we're getting ready for war. And that becomes the 1940 election. Where that's more of a question as to whether now we're really facing this issue of, is he going to get a third term? How was that feeling to people at the time? because, you know, what was in the air as far as FDR's decision making?

So FDR was very clever. I mean, this is one of the most effective politicians ever. He knew it would not work for him to come out and say he wanted to run for a third term. Because the presumption of two terms from George Washington was as strong as it ever was. And especially in a world where people were looking at fascism in Europe, they wanted, they did not want that in the United States. There was a small fascist party, and you could argue some of the America First Movement had some fascist leanings, but most Americans rejected that, as I think they still do. And so Roosevelt couldn't come out and say he was going to run for a third term. So what he did on the eve of the

1940 Democratic Convention, and this was a time when conventions really did choose candidates, he said that if he was drafted, if the country needed him, he turned his position for a third term into the Washington position by saying, I don't seek it. And two terms is appropriate. But if the country needs me, just as the country needed Washington and needed Lincoln, if it needs me for a third term because of the continued problems at home and because of the brewing conflict overseas, remember in 1940, by this point, World War II is already on in Europe. Germany has already invaded Poland. And we've seen the start of World War II. So if I am needed, I will be willing to serve again, and he does orchestrate it behind the scenes so that the Democratic Party nominates him.

But he never says three terms is appropriate. His argument is that these conditions are the reason. Very smart. Was there a strong challenge to his third term within the Democratic Party? There was a great deal of discomfort with it for a variety of reasons, the main one being what we're talking about here. But there were other concerns, too. He was not the healthiest person. We have to recognize that he dies before Churchill and Stalin, and in all those photos,

you can see he's much worse in his health, but yet he's the youngest of them. So there are concerns about his health. There were also concerns that, you know, he's not going to be able to function as a war leader. This is before the United States is in the war. It turns out he becomes a very good war leader, but not everyone thought that was the case at the time. He had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy, but this was not really his metier. So there were concerns, but he was also so popular, Don. And I think even Americans who didn't want a third term, they felt so attached to him.

It's interesting also in the oral histories of people who lived that period. It's not only that they couldn't imagine someone else's president because he'd been president so long, they couldn't imagine someone else's president because no one had been president like him before. Yeah, right. Young people don't realize that this is a lot of where the 20th century that we've lived in, many of us went through, really gets its footing in terms of politics. I mean, the Republicans have not won a presidential election since Hoover. And by the time FDR's out, I mean, dies, it will have been 12 years. And that entrenchment of Democratic Party power is a huge factor in the 20th century

and what happens throughout the middle part of the 20th century. Just a sideline that fascinates me. He wins that election in 1940 by a wide margin against Wendell Wilkie, who was actually a very challenging candidate, and goes on, of course, World War II unfolds. That has a lot to do with the story, obviously, as we lean heavier and heavier on the president to guide us through this time. He then flexes his power as commander-in-chief, and this is really the beginning of that whole new idea of the president, even though that was his constitutional power. but we'd never had to worry about that kind of thing before. Yeah, the United States had not been engaged in a war on that scale outside of our own territory. The civil war was in some ways an even graver war and brought on as much executive power through Abraham Lincoln, but that was a war on our territory not far away.

But you could argue that that is the analog for Roosevelt's expansion of presidential power. He's doing many of the things Lincoln did in a more industrial society. in a larger society, and he's doing it on a global scale. When he wins the 1944 election and then promptly dies, I mean, that is a good argument for way too long in office. If your health is that big a concern and so forth, he won that election, by the way, handily, you know, even as a nearly dead man, incredibly. This is when the argument makes sense that we really need to consider why we don't have a law that, that, that forbids this. But this law is going to be passed because the Republicans are not in power at this time.

They want more power. They see how hard this was to go through and they need to change the game. It is the Republicans who will drive this idea of a two-term limitation directly because of Franklin Roosevelt. But that plays out very interestingly later on. The arguments that have been made over this issue, crisis of leadership versus democratic constraint, electoral legitimacy versus structural safeguards. These are important ideas. There's a really important element of this discussion, which has to do with the people's choice. To have the government decide that someone is not a viable candidate simply because they've had two terms forbids the people from making their own choice. That's going to emerge central to this whole issue, isn't it? Yes. I mean, the argument

against the two-term limit is, as you say, and it's the argument made in 1947, 48, 49, is that you're denying people a choice. Why shouldn't people have been allowed to vote for Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 or 44 if he's the person that they wanted? There's a second argument made also against the term limit, which is that it makes the president in their second term a lame duck. And this is a problem that presidents, even with non-consecutive terms, confront. Once you cannot run again, you lose leverage over people in your own party as well as people outside of your party. Those are the arguments against it, but it's a very strong argument for the limitations, not just because of presidential health. There is a concern among Republicans and some Democrats that Roosevelt had

become a near dictator, that he had been in power for so long and had so much control that it was very hard to unseat him. And there's reason to believe that, let's say he had been a young, healthy man, he could have just kept going. And so that is a real concern people have at the time. But important to realize he probably wouldn't have been in this position had it not been for World War II looming. That's probably really what got him in there and what sustained him after that. After the break, Jeremy and I detail the passing of the 22nd Amendment and how it has affected presidents ever since. I'm right back. Welcome back to this conversation with Professor Jeremy Surrey about the two-term amendment, the 22nd,

how it altered political life in this nation so profoundly for better or for worse. Jeremy, after FDR dies, 1940, the spring of 1945, Congress moves relatively fast, certainly for Congress. But this was only building on a previous momentum. So take us how this happened, how the passing of this rule happened in Congress and then the ratification later on. So after FDR dies in April of 45, there's a focus on ending the war. And then in 1946, there's the beginning really of a discussion about what the post-war order was. look like. And the leader of the Republican Party, the people who many thought would be the next Republican president, was a man named Robert Taft from Ohio. And Robert Taft was a believer that after World War II, the United States, in some ways had to go back to where we were before the war insofar as we were going to put limits on the extraordinary uses of power that we had allowed

during World War II. People have to remember that during World War II we had wage and price controls. D.C. set wages for the whole country. Washington, D.C. set ration rules for how much beef you could eat and how much oil you could use through gasoline in your car. So Taft was part of a Republican, we might call it push back against these changes that were inherited after World War II to try to put limits. And one of the key limits was to say, we should not, under normal circumstances, have a president like FDR, who will be in office for so long with some much power. And of course, this served the interests of Republicans who were out of power. There were a lot of Democrats who agreed with this. It had bipartisan momentum because there were Democrats who were very

concerned about even Harry Truman staying in too long. Harry Truman was not the most popular person within the Democratic Party in 1946, 47. He had been a compromised vice president for Franklin Roosevelt. And there was concern even among Democrats that one of their own would take on this role. So it gains momentum very quickly. Passes, Congress in 1947 and then goes to the states where it's ratified by 1951. Yeah, important chapter in that is that in 1947, the Republicans win the midterms. This was the first time in a long time that they had gotten power back in Congress. And that is the engine of a lot of what we're talking about here.

There's a clear desire to prevent another FDR from locking down the presidency, basically. And work begins to draft more solid restrictions. which brings us to the 22nd Amendment. I've been dying to read this thing. Let me go. No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice, and no person who has held the office of president or acted as president for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected president shall be elected to the office of the presidency and more.

Okay. This is the beginning of the first section of that amendment. There's subtleties in here that are maybe too much to get into, but there is a problem with the idea of the vice president coming back, you know, there's all kinds of little intricacies in there. But it's basically stating you can't do it for more than two terms, even if they're non-sequential, right? You cannot be elected president at any time in your lifetime, more than two times. Yeah, exactly. And this finally gets ratification, which is always, it takes a long time to get all the states to ratify this by 1951. The bottom line, because the 22nd Amendment has now altered the way

presidents govern in their second term. And this was the point you were making before. that there's a fairness question here. Once you've done that to a president in their second term, you limit their ability to do things they were elected to do in the first place. That's true, though we have to be careful to recognize that since there was such a strong presumption of only two terms before, this limitation was kind of there. It wasn't as firm, but it was it was kind of there as well. People assumed correctly that toward the end of his second term Jefferson was not going to run again. They presumed that they would have for Lincoln if he had had a full second term without being assassinated.

Woodrow Wilson faced this in his second term. So that limit was there. You already became kind of a lame duck in your second term. But now it's a firmer lame duckery, I guess we would call it. And you cannot, as in a second term president, even threatened to run again. It also supercharges the first term. You know you have this much time to do this thing. So that's why they go crazy.

That's exactly right. Now, there's an alternative view of this, by the way, that a number of us as historians have put forth that doesn't contradict what we just said. but provides a different perspective on this, which is why history is so important, right? In second terms, presidents like Eisenhower and Reagan, because they know they're not running again, sometimes they'll do things that they really care about that aren't popular in their own party

because they don't have to worry about it. So both Eisenhower and Reagan become peace presidents in parties that are pretty hawkish in their second terms, pursuing arms control agreements and various other things, that would not have really. resonated with their parties if they had to get another nomination. So you could argue that in some cases, it actually encourages, shall we say, more bipartisanship at that point. Reagan's second term is one of the most successful terms of any president in the United States. And I think it's largely because

Reagan abandons some of the more extreme positions he adopted in 1980 and in the 84 election. Even President Nixon, who doesn't finish out even his second term, but he does detente with the USSR, all kinds of things that were contrary to his original positions. Yes, it is a Nixon second term that he belatedly ends the war in Vietnam, pulls American forces out, and moves toward more cooperative relations with the Soviet Union and with China, things that he had started in his first term. And you could argue in the second term, he felt a little freer to do that, perhaps. Is there an argument these days for repealing this? Any chance that's going to happen? No. No one has proposed that. There is a current president in the United States who sometimes muses about how he wishes this wasn't there. And other presidents have too. Bill Clinton once in a while would muse about this. But there's no serious movement. No one thinks this is a bad idea. And there are two reasons why. First of all, by eight years, most people are tired of the people are tired of the people who are president. And second, most of the people who are president themselves are tired of being in office. George W. Bush and Barack Obama, neither of them were sad to leave the White House. Both of them were ready to leave the way.

Eight years in that job is probably too much for any human being now. Yeah. And this is a point I made in my book, The Impossible Presidency. I mean, if you look at presidents and the deterioration in their health, and this is true for our current president, you look at how their health deteriorates in this office, and you know what, it's probably not an office anyone should be in more than eight years. Well, there was, you know, back of the day, there was a six-year presidency that was going to be a one-term idea. There have been many ideas about this.

That's what's important to keep in mind. Is any of the political polarization that we have today, the feeling of stagnancy, any related at all to the fact that we have two terms only for a president? I think it's more related, honestly, to the fact that we don't have term limits on members of Congress. Now, that's really problematic. I'm not necessarily for that. But a lot of the partisanship we have on both sides of the aisle are people who are in office for a long time and fearful of losing office. And so they go along with a party dictate and follow the money rather than follow their guts and their beliefs and their hearts. So in the end, in summation, we get a constitutional amendment that in more ways than not has improved the balance of power.

and actually energize the presidency in unexpected ways. Is that a fair take on this? I think so. I think it's part of the modern post-World War II presidency that presidents have become more powerful, but more fleeting in their time in office. And that does, for the best presidents, force them to be more creative.

Let's come back to Reagan again. In Reagan's second term, which is so successful, he actually finds ways to work with his own party and with Democrats. ways that he didn't before. He finds ways to work with foreign leaders like Gorbachev. Maybe he gets lucky, but he has to be creative. He knows it can't just be fire and brimstone and, you know, strong rhetoric. He knows he has to do things. And we know he knows this because he tells his own advisors this time and again when they come back to him and expect him to be the Reagan of 83.

He's explaining to them that in his second term, the Reagan of 86 and 87 has to be different from the Reagan of 83. Jeremy, it's been great to see. see again. This is a new year we're in, and I hope we see you many times as it comes to pass. Jeremy Surrey is at the University of Texas at Austin. Hey, just looking for his episodes. We got him 319 and 321, our two of the better ones, our best and worst presidents. But there have been others as well and others in the future. Thank you so much, Jeremy. Nice to see you. Always a pleasure to talk with you, Don. Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays, all kinds of content from

mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements, to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support.