Why was Franklin Delano Roosevelt the only president elected for more than two t

Question: Why was Franklin Delano Roosevelt the only president elected for more than two terms!?

Was it because they were sure his power wouldn't take over the country!?Www@QuestionHome@Com

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Washington set a precedent that no president before FDR tried to go against!. He choose only to serve two consecutive terms!. Only Grant and Teddy Roosevelt attempted to run for a third, non-consecutive term as president but both failed!.

At the end of his second term Washington was still quite popular and could have easily been elected to a third term had he wanted to run!. But he wanted to retire from the presidency after his second term and so did not run again!. There was nothing limiting any of the presidents who followed him from attempting to serve more than eight years as president!. Yet until FDR no president served more than two terms!.

Then FDR was elected in '32, during the Depression which he had vowed he'd get America out of!. By '36 we were still in the Depression, but Roosevelt's policies appeared to be helping America get through it!. Indeed those terrifying early years were over and people were getting work again!. In '33 about 25% of the work force was unemployed!. A quarter of the country's working population without jobs!. By '36 Roosevelt's policies had helped that number drop to about 17% and they were still dropping!. He won re-election because people truely believed he could get the country out of the Depression!. And look at the year of his second innaguration, in '37 the unemployment rate was down to around 14%!. It would go back up to 19% in '38 but would again start dropping, never getting back up to what it had been in '33 and earlier in the Depression!.

By '40 the Depression was pretty much over!. Unemployment among the working population had dropped to around 14!.6%!. Things were looking up, Roosevelt had done as promised, he'd gotten the country through the Depression!. But he could see the war clouds coming!. Already Europe and Asia were embroiled in WWII, and he knew America would get involved!. He'd lead the country through one crises and wanted to do so again!. So he did something no one had ever done before, he ran for a third term!. And he won!. He won again in '44, becoming the only president to obtain four terms in the White House!.

Then after FDR's death Congress did something to ensure it could never happen again!. They passed the 22nd amendment, ensuring that a president can only a maximum of ten years in office!. Ten years and not eight!? Yup, as long as the president succeds the previous president when they only have two years or less in their presidency!. Nixon was elected to his second term in '72 and innagurated to it in '73!. But he left office in '74, having not yet served two years!. So Ford, currently the only man since LBJ to have succeeded a sitting president who still had years left on his term in office, could not have served more than eight years in office!. LBJ was the only man since FDR who could have served more than eight years, Kennedy was running for re-election when he died so he'd already served more than two years of his term!. But LBJ was defeated in '68 so he didn't get to serve two full terms of his own plus the remainder of Kennedy's!.

What I find rather ironic is that Congress passed a bill stating no president can serve more than a grand total of ten years in office, setting term limits on the presidency, but any Senator or Representative can serve a life time once they get in as long as they keep getting elected!. Term limits for the president Congress approved of but they will never approve of them for themselves because that just might put them out of a job!. Rather hypocritical to say we can put the president out of one but don't dare try putting us out of it!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

22ND AMENDMENT (1951)

George Washington could have been elected to a third term, but declined it, suggesting two terms of four years were enough for any president!. In 1797, he quietly returned to Mount Vernon!. His two-term example became an unwritten rule in the realm of presidential politics until 1940!. That was when Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who steered the nation through the Great Depression of the 1930s, decided he wanted to run again!. Newspapers railed against the breach of tradition!. His Republican opponent, Wendell Willkie forced the incumbent to run a hard campaign, which Roosevelt won!. He then went after, and received, a fourth term in office, explaining that he could not leave the helm at a time he was guiding a nation through the Second World War!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

FDR was NOT the first President to serve two terms (sorry, Catiexxx), In fact, until the passage of the 22nd Amendment, the two-term practice was merely following a precedent set by none other than the first president, George Washington!.

Other two-term presidents were Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Woodrow Wilson, to name a few!.

He, naturally, gained a great deal of popularity for the measures he pushed through in order to alleviate the suffering during the Great Depression!.

During his third term in office, th United States entered World War II and he was reelected in 1944--generally speaking, the US had a habit of, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, "Not changing horses in the middle of the stream" during wartime (Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR are all examples of this)!.

He died in office in April, 1945, less than a month before
V-E (Victory in Europe) Day, which was May 8 of that year!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Originally, the Constitution set no limit on the number of times a person could serve as president!. After George Washington decided not to run for a third term, it became traditional for presidents to limit themselves to two terms!. (Some presidents, of course, served only one term!.) FDR's decision to run for a third terms in 1940 was a controversial break with tradition!. After Roosevelt's death, the Twenty-Second Amendment was added to the Constitution, limiting subsequent presidents to two terms!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Well, first of all, he was the only sitting President to ever run for a third term!.Teddy Roosevelt ran for a third term after being out of office for four years in 1912 for the Bull Moose Party!. It was tradition, started by George Washington, more than anything else that dictated the two-term limit!. In 1940, with the impending threat of war and the economy, the people wanted FDR for a third term!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

The answers regarding the 22nd Amendment not having been passed yet were perfectly accurate!. In fact, the 22nd Amednment was passed in order to prevent any more future Roosevelts, who many thought had become too powerful!.

But the reason why he got re-elected so many times is based on the effectiveness of his administration!. Too many people were out of work and he was the only person in Washington who seemed capable of providing any hope to the nation to weather the Great Depression!. Ironically, many of his public works and financing programs have been shown to ultimately be failures (it was the Wrold War II that ended the Great Depression), but to anyone who was unemployed, Roosevelt was helping them to find jobs and put food in their belly!. And thats how too many Americans were living then: on a day-to-day basis!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Ahmmm, the US was at Major war!.!.that had a lot to do with it!. He was a strong leader He and Churchhill represented the Free World!.
Roosevelt _did not_go off and declare war on Spain when Japan attacked us on the excuse that the Philippines had once been under Spanish rule and the Philippines are close to Japan so we might as well declare war on Spain and set everyone straight, as seems to be the fashion now!.
He had his priorities and he knew the Free World was at stake!. Even the people who did not like him or vote for him respected him!.
He also was not in favor of multi-term Presidencies, but his leadership was seen as essentail to the war effort!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Because he was in office so long was part of the reason for the two term limit!. Besides we were in a war so changing pres would have been more messy , as we are about to see for ourselves!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

I suspect that it was because he was so popular to the electorate!. But isn't it telling that the politicians changed the rules apparently as a direct result of his success!?Www@QuestionHome@Com

FDR was the only president to serve more than two terms!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

i think cuz he dealt with the Great Depression, and the US involvement in the war, really worked to the US best!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Simple; 22nd amendment wasn't passed yet!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

he was the first president too serve two terms!. he was more or less re-elected that four times it because the trust the country had in him after pulling them out of the depression!. the country knew that he would not take over the country because The system of checks and balances that gave each branch of the government equal power !. After his 16th year due too health problems he resigned for good!. then the law was made that a president can only serve two terms!.Www@QuestionHome@Com