22nd amendment: A thought experiment

[Rochester]

The year is 1947 and the 22nd Amendment, establishing term limits for presidents, is being debated. A group of congressmen push a proposal to add a clause disqualifying from the presidency any first-degree blood relative of any current or former president. Another group of congressmen think that if a president's children are disqualified, then so should be his stepchildren, and so they get the proposal changed to include first-degree relatives by marriage. Like most people in 1947, none of them think a female president is realistic, and so they never think it would be used to disqualify a former president's wife. Like the rest of the 22nd amendment (the part that is actually real), it is silent about the vice presidency.

If this had passed, then Bobby Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, George W. Bush, and Hillary Clinton, among others, could never have run for president.

Would you, citizen of the year 1947, a time when only one of the four named above is even old enough to vote and one isn't even around yet, have supported this proposal?

How do you think history would have unfolded, if it had actually been proposed (and passed, and ratified)?

If such a proposal came about today, with a stipulation that if ratified, it wouldn't take effect until 2024, would you support it?

[whopis01]

1. I would have supported it then and would support it now

I feel that in a nation of 300+ million citizens it is ridiculous to have political power so focused on a small handful of families.

This nation does need political dynasties. It needs diversity in all forms.

[TipTok]

2. Silly...

Political dynasties are a problem but it's our fault that we keep re-electing these same people.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. Ummm, I don't think that amendment would have kept those

you've named from running. How it is you think it applies to siblings totally escapes me. Here's the actual amendment:

Section 1. 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 President more than once. But this article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

Section 2. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within seven years from the date of its submission to the states by the Congress.

I don't see anything there about siblings or spouses. What am I missing?


For what it's worth, Harry Truman was exempt from the two term limit, and I recall him, sometime in the 1960s, pointing that out. He should have run again.