ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, October 25, 1996 TAG: 9610250049
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
IF BILL Clinton is re-elected, he'll be a lame-duck president from the start of his new term, the first Democrat to be in that position. That's because Clinton, if re-elected, will be the first Democrat subject to the 22nd Amendment.
Thus would end one of history's small ironies. The 22nd, ratified in 1951 and limiting presidents to two terms, was a Republican-initiated reaction to Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt's unprecedented winning of four presidential elections. But until now, the amendment has made lame ducks only of Republican presidents - Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
In Nixon's case, the threat of impeachment forced him out of office before completion of his second term anyway. But Eisenhower and Reagan served two full terms, and were prevented by the amendment from even considering a third.
Among postwar Democrats, Harry Truman (though he chose not to seek another term in 1952) was specifically exempted as the sitting president when the amendment became operative. Lyndon Johnson, who filled John Kennedy's unexpired term and then was elected on his own, also could have run again in 1968 (though, like Truman, chose not to). The time left in Kennedy's unexpired term had been too little for it to count.
No other postwar president - Democrats Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, and Republicans Gerald Ford and George Bush - served more than one term.
Critics of the 22nd say the amendment, by making automatic lame ducks of second-term presidents, politically disables them. But if anyone can cope with that, perhaps it's Clinton - the odds-makers' favorite now who, less than two short years ago, looked very much like a lame duck.
LENGTH: Short : 37 linesby CNB