"Fact" Book

Today I borrowed a Presidential Fact Book, as the title says, from a US History teacher. I basicially orgasmed when I initially saw it. It was as thick as Harry Potter, but it wasn't about fictional boys saving the world as they go through puberty, it was about something almost as irrelevant to my life but three hundred times as interesting, the presidents of days past!

Excited, I read the chapter on George Washington once I got home with the monster of a book. The first thing I noticed was that in the quick facts at the beginning, it listed Washington as a member of the Federalist Party. This bothered me, as Washington was not officially in any party and is well known for saying we should avoid political parties in his farewell address. But I shrugged this off, because he honestly did prefer the views of the Federalists.

However, later in the chapter, there was a "fact" I could not forgive. It said that Washington's precedent of bowing out after two terms was not broken until FDR was elected to his third term in 1940.

This certainly isn't true.

The book makes the assumption that because FDR is the only president to be elected to more than two terms that he is the only person to break this precedent. However, in order to break the precedent, all that a person would have to do is be elected to two terms and run for a third.

Ulysses S. Grant was president for two terms, then Rutherford B. Hayes succeeded him. Hayes faught corruption, the spoils system, and the political machine in his term. So in 1880, Grant was the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party favorite to be nominated for president. He failed to be nominated because of the rift between the Stalwarts and Half-Breeds, but the point stands that there was effort to get him a third term.

The other Roosevelt, Theodore, ran for a third term in 1912, when he was dissatisfied with the way his handpicked successor was running the show. He failed to get the Republican nomination, but ran under his own new party, the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party.

So the real fact in this matter is that George Washington's precedent of leaving the office of president voluntarily and forever after two terms was broken in our nation's history, and not only by FDR.