Washington Post Calls For Repeal of 22nd Amendment

An opinion in the venerable Washington Post asserts that Barack Obama should run for a third term because of his magnificent amazing awesomeness.  What stands in the way of the third most excellent term of President Obama is the pesky 22nd Amendment to the Constitution.  The very same Constitution President Obama has sworn to up hold.

The no third term thing, according to the WaPo is entirely because.....Republicans.

To Republicans, these developments echoed the fascist trends enveloping Europe. “You will be serving under an American totalitarian government before the long third term is finished,” warned Wendell Wilkie, Roosevelt’s opponent in 1940. Once the two-term tradition was broken, Wilkie added, nobody could put it back together. “If this principle dies, it will be dead forever,” he said.

That’s why the GOP moved to codify it in the Constitution in 1947, when a large Republican majority took over Congress. Ratified by the states in 1951, the 22nd Amendment was an “undisguised slap at the memory of Franklin D. Roosevelt,” wrote Clinton Rossiter, one of the era’s leading political scientists. It also reflected “a shocking lack of faith in the common sense and good judgment of the people,” Rossiter said.

No, Mr. Rossiter, it did and it does the opposite.  It reflects the great common sense and good judgment of the American people.   America is not (yet) a dictatorship where one ruler and one party remains in power until a coup de etat brings another regime into power.

Nor does Obama have to fear the voters, which might be the scariest problem of all. If he chooses, he could simply ignore their will. And if the people wanted him to serve another term, why shouldn’t they be allowed to award him one?

America does not have an imperial presidency, no matter that the editorial board of the Washington Post wishes America did.  Their editorial favoring a third term would not have been published, or even considered during the second term of George W. Bush.

My jaded view is that there are no coincidences in politics.  This op-ed was published not randomly, but for a reason.  And that reason is to begin paving the way, to begin preparing the American citizens, for the notion of a third Obama term. 

Wag the dog.  Executive orders.  Postpone the election until the current crisis has passed.  Use the IRS to quash conservative interest groups and political action committees.  Limit political speech on the radio.  Define who is or can be a journalist; then give only that group White House access, provided they parrot the talking points.

Fasten your seatbelts.

Editorial here.