AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) has drafted a constitutional amendment that, if ratified, would allow President Donald Trump to run for a third term. However, the measure is worded to prevent former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton from returning to the Oval Office.
The 22nd Amendment states, “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.”
The amendment was ratified in 1951, six years after Franklin Roosevelt died in office during his unprecedented fourth term. He was the only president to serve more than two terms.
That could change if Ogles‘ longest of longshot bids to enact a 28th Amendment succeeds. It states:
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than three times, nor be elected to any additional term after being elected to two consecutive terms, 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 twice.
Since Obama, Bush, and Clinton each served two consecutive terms, they would still be disqualified from the presidency. But since Trump is serving a second, non-consecutive term, he would allowed to serve again.
This is all moot, considering Ogles’ amendment requires the approval of two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-fourths of the states to be ratified. But as Axios explained on Thursday, “[I]t is a marker of the depths of fealty the new president enjoys within the House GOP.”
Trump is only the second president to serve a second, nonconsecutive term. Grover Cleveland, the 22nd president, lost his reelection bid to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 before defeating Harrison in the 1892 rematch.
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