AMERICAN PRESIDENCY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 180, 1 July 1937, Page 9

AMERICAN PRESIDENCY.

“NO THIRD TERM” POLICY. WASHINGTON, June 29. At his conference with Press • representatives to-day. President Roosevelt jestingly evaded a question on whether he would accept nomination for a third term in office, telling the interviewer to don the dunce’s cap. A political twist was given to the strike situation when Mr G. H. Earle, Governor of Philadelphia, who has frequently been mentioned as a Democratic nominee for the Presidency, withdrew from consideration of nomination in a statement issued last week, in which he advocated a third term for Piesident Roosevelt.

HISTORY OF THIRD TERM. iVashingtoh refused a third term “simply because he was tired of public office,” and ho did so “almost apologetically” in these words:- — “I rejoice that the state of your commerce, external as well as internal. no longer renders the pursuit of inclination incompatible with the sentiment of duty or propriety ; and am persuaded, whatever partiality may he retained for my services, that in the present circumstances of our country you will not disapprove my determination to retire.” Jefferson declared against a third term because of the danger “that the indulgence and attachments of the people will keep a man in the chair after he becomes a dotard,” and because he feared tjiat the absence of any limit to the number of terms either in the Constitution or in custom might result in making the term of office for life and then into “ail inheritance.” General Grant, while holding that until the Federal Constitution is amended “the people can not be restricted in their choice” further than the Constitution restricts them, declared that he would not accept a third nomination “unless it should come under such circumstances as to make it an imperative duty.” It .was at this time that the House of Representatives, then in control of the Democrats, passed a resolution declaring that the tradition forbidding a third term had “by universal concurrence” become a part of our system of government, and any departure from it would be unwise, unpatriotic, and fraught with peril to our free institutions.” . This resolution had no legal force, but the effort to make Grant a candidate for a third consecutive term died out a little later. After an interregnum of four years lie was again a candidate for the nomination and was defeated after a hard battle in the convention. ' There was an effort to make Cleveland a candidate for a third non-con-secutive term, but it was defeated by David B. Hill. McKinley had occasion to consider the same possibilitj of a third term, and. publicly stated lie would not accept it. Then came the Theodore Roosevelt regime and his declaration in 1904. “On the fourth of March next I.shall have served three and a-lialf years, and this three and a-lialf years constitutes mv first term. The wise custom which limits the President to two terms regards the substance and not the form, and under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination.” In 1907 be repeated this, saving: “I have not changed and shall not ' change the decision thus announced.” , In a letter later still he declared that an effort to make him a candidate again would be regarded by him as a genuine calamitv” to the country. Nevertheless, he did run for a third term and got a glorious licking in the process.