Will of the people for President to serve more

In defence of 18th Amendment to the Constitution:

Dr T C Rajaratnam

Singapore has been successful due to political stability. Lee Kuan Yew served as Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990

In 1783, the Treaty of Paris left the United States independent and at peace, but with an unsettled governmental structure. The Second Continental Congress had drawn up the Articles of Confederation in 1777, describing a permanent confederation, but granting to the Congress - the only federal institution - little power to finance itself or to ensure that its resolutions were enforced. In part, this reflected the anti-monarchy view of the Revolutionary period and the new American system was explicitly designed to prevent the rise of an American tyrant.

However, during the economic depression due to the collapse of the continental dollar following the American Revolution, the viability of the American Government was threatened by political unrest in several states, efforts by debtors to use popular government to erase their debts and the apparent inability of the Continental Congress to redeem the public obligations incurred during the war.

The Congress also appeared unable to become a forum for productive cooperation among the States encouraging commerce and economic development. In response, the Philadelphia Convention was convened, ostensibly to devise amendments to the Articles of Confederation, but which instead began to draft a new system of government that would include greater executive power while retaining the checks and balances thought to be essential restraints on any imperial tendency in the office of the President.

Founding Fathers

Individuals who presided over the Continental Congress during the Revolutionary period and under the Articles of Confederation had the title ‘President of the United States in Congress Assembled’, often shortened to ‘President of the United States’. However, the office had little distinct executive power.

With the 1788 ratification of the Constitution, a separate executive branch was created, headed by the ‘President of the United States’. This new Chief Executive role no longer bore the duties of presiding over Congress in a supervisory role, but the title ‘President’ was carried over nevertheless.

This title was a major understatement of the actual role empowered to the office by the Constitution and this choice of words can be seen as a deliberate effort by the Founding Fathers to prevent the Head of State position from evolving toward becoming a monarchical position, with the accompanying potential for abuse of such power.

Executive privilege gives a President the ability to withhold information from Congress and federal courts in matters of national security. George Washington first claimed privilege when Congress requested to see Chief Justice John Jay’s notes from an unpopular treaty negotiation with Great Britain. While not enshrined in the Constitution, or any other law, Washington’s action created the precedent for the privilege.

When Richard Nixon tried to use executive privilege as a reason for not turning over subpoenaed evidence to Congress during the Watergate scandal, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974), that executive privilege did not apply in cases where a President was attempting to avoid criminal prosecution. When President Bill Clinton attempted to use executive privilege regarding the Lewinsky scandal, the Supreme Court ruled in Clinton v. Jones, 520 US 681 (1997), that the privilege also could not be used in civil suits. These cases established the legal precedent that executive privilege is valid although the exact extent of the privilege has yet to be clearly defined.

Eligible person

In accordance to the Twenty-second Amendment, no eligible person can be elected President more than twice. The Twenty-second Amendment also specifies that if any eligible person who serves as President or acting President for more than two years of a term for which some other eligible person was elected President, the former can only be elected President once. Scholars disagree whether anyone no longer eligible to be elected President could be elected vice president, pursuant to the qualifications set out under the Twelfth Amendment.

Franklin D Roosevelt was elected to four terms before the adoption of the Twenty-second Amendment.

The term of office for President and Vice President is four years. George Washington, the first President, set an unofficial precedent of serving only two terms, which subsequent presidents followed until 1940.

Before Franklin D. Roosevelt, attempts at a third term were encouraged by supporters of Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt; neither of these attempts succeeded. In 1940, Franklin Roosevelt declined to seek a third term, but allowed his political party to ‘draft’ him as their Presidential candidate and was subsequently elected to a third term.

In 1941, the US became involved in World War II, which later led voters to elect Roosevelt to a fourth term in 1944.

After the war, and in response to Roosevelt’s shattering of precedent, the Twenty-second Amendment was adopted. The amendment bars anyone from being elected President more than twice, or once if that person served more than half of another President’s term. Harry S. Truman, who was President when the amendment was adopted, and so by the amendment’s provisions exempt from its limitation, also briefly sought a third (a second full) term before withdrawing from the 1952 election.

Since the amendment’s adoption, four Presidents have served two full terms: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush sought a second term, but were defeated.

Richard Nixon was elected to a second term, but resigned before completing it. Lyndon B. Johnson was the only President under the amendment to be eligible to serve more than two terms in total, having served for only fourteen months following John F. Kennedy’s assassination. However, Johnson withdrew from the 1968 Democratic Primary, surprising many Americans by stating, “I shall not seek and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.” Gerald Ford sought a full term, after serving out the last two years and five months of Nixon’s second term, but was not elected.

Singapore

Singapore is a classic example of economic and democratic success by political stability. Singapore has been successful due to political stability .Lee Kuan Yew served as Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990.

To be continued