Essentially, this means that someone could serve for life, which many people equated with monarchical rule.
Beginning with George Washington and lasting through Harry S. Truman, presidents could serve as many terms as they could win. It wasn’t until after Franklin D. Roosevelt won four consecutive presidential elections, leaving office only because of his death, that the government warmed up to the idea of having term limits.
Let's travel back in time to the founding era. Back then, the U.S. had no presidential term limits because under the Articles of Confederation, there was no such thing as a president. (There was a president of the Continental Congress in the 1780s, but it was not a chief executive position.)
The Articles’ framers in the Second Continental Congress deliberately left out a head-of-state because they fretted over creating another king in the mold of King George III of Great Britain, with whom they’d just severed ties after winning independence from the mother country.
Yet in 1787, a new Constitutional Convention formed to scrap the Articles and draft a Constitution that was completely different. The result was much less democratic than the Articles or any state constitution at the time.
Some of the Constitutional framers still had serious qualms about creating a chief executive who was too much like a king. But they came pretty close to the edge with things like the presidential pardon -- a power that brings to mind the British King’s “royal prerogative of mercy" -- and by nearly making the presidency a straightforward lifetime appointment.
Many of the Framers -- including James Madison and Alexander Hamilton -- backed a lifetime appointment for presidents selected by Congress and not elected by the people, which would have made the presidency a so-called elective monarchy. However, when this was put to a vote, it failed by only six votes to four.
Instead, they came up with a complex voting system involving the electoral college that would still guarantee, as the framers desired, that presidential elections were not solely in the hands of ordinary voters. Within this system, they shortened a president’s appointment to four years. Because most of the framers didn’t want to set any limits on how many four-year terms a president could serve, however, they made no mention of it in the Constitution.
Nonetheless, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson ended up setting a two-term precedent. Washington passed on running a third time, but did clarify that he would’ve if he felt he was needed. Jefferson, on the other hand, felt that two terms was sufficient for one person, and that more might overreach executive power. Thus, two terms became the unofficial standard thereafter.
That is, until Franklin D. Roosevelt bucked tradition by winning successive elections in 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944. He served a total of 12 years and died just a few months following his last inauguration.
So why did FDR serve so long?
When a country faces national and international crises, it might prefer to keep the same government in power for longer than usual. And during that time, the U.S. was contending with the extraordinary circumstances of both the Great Depression and World War II. Still, FDR’s long tenure created unease about the prospect of presidential tyranny.
By the end of his third term, Roosevelt’s high blood pressure and the beginnings of congestive heart failure were making him too ill to serve, rendering him incapable of working more than about four hours a day. Many who regularly saw the president doubted that he would complete his fourth term. Unfortunately, they were correct.
These concerns led to the 22nd Amendment, ratified on February 27, 1951, which established a two-term limit for presidents.
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