Can Obama Run Again for President?
President Obama speaks in Ethiopia. While there, he noted that in the U.S., presidents can't run for more than two terms. Simply if they could, he said, he'd win. Mulugeta Ayene/AP hide caption
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Mulugeta Ayene/AP
President Obama speaks in Ethiopia. While there, he noted that in the U.S., presidents can't run for more than two terms. But if they could, he said, he'd win.
Mulugeta Ayene/AP
President Obama was giving the final speech of his Africa tour, offer a critique of the young democracies on that continent, singling out the all-too-typical practice of leaders overstaying their terms in part.
"When a leader tries to change the rules in the eye of the game only to stay in office, it risks instability and strife," Obama said, aware that the president of Republic of burundi, seated nearby, had recently defied that country's 2-term limit.
Obama pointed to the shining example of Nelson Mandela, the starting time blackness president of South Africa, who left function on schedule and transferred power peacefully.
Obama also pointed to himself.
"I actually think I'one thousand a pretty good president," he said with a smile. "I think if I ran I could win. Only I can't. ... The law is the law, and no one person is above the police, not fifty-fifty the president."
The law the president mentioned is the 22nd Subpoena to the U.Due south. Constitution, limiting a president to 2 terms. It was ratified in 1951, in a kind of delayed reaction to the epochal presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won his fourth term in 1944.
Obama was talking about African leaders, but back in the states, that context was frequently lost in heated reactions to his claim to re-electability.
The very idea ignited digital high dudgeon. News websites featuring the story were soon festooned with endless reader comments, many interpreting Obama's statement equally a dark hint that he plans to do merely what he was denouncing.
Wrote i commenter identified as "Snowleopard" on The Bonfire: "Honestly, I wait that Obama will find some excuse to nullify the next elections, and declare himself as President for Life ... "
"Sargeking" heard much the same bulletin: "He has ignored our Constitution from day ane since 2008, why should he amend his ways now? In fact, I harbor the thought that he's waiting for some major event that will posture him in a 'holdover' for the elapsing."
Some commenters worried about Obama finagling a third term past some dorsum-door maneuver, such as having first lady Michelle Obama run for president — or perhaps past becoming vice president to a President Joe Biden.
But fifty-fifty those who do non imagine a palace coup in the making might well dispute the president's boast most winning once again.
A third term, really? With all the controversy over Obamacare and the Iran bargain and executive orders on immigration? With an approving number that's nearly always beneath 50 percent, and other measures of the national mood lukewarm at all-time?
Well, it's an exercise in pure speculation. But it is a question with real relevance for Hillary Clinton, or whomever the Democrats current of air up nominating. Because that nominee will inevitably be said to be running for "Obama's 3rd term."
Let'south say you combine three polling numbers: the president'south job-blessing ratings, the national "right direction-wrong track" score and the "generic ballot" for Congress (a choice between the parties). Obama's standing by these data points right now is about where it was in the summertime of 2012, less than vi months before he swamped Mitt Romney in the Electoral Higher.
The deviation is, of form, that when you become from polling to an actual election, you run against an bodily opponent. And the question of re-election becomes: "Compared to what?"
That idea weighed on blogger Aaron Goldstein on the bourgeois The American Spectator's website. While dreading the thought of some other Obama term, Goldstein wasn't sure the voters would agree.
"Say what you lot will near Obama," Goldstein wrote. "The man knows how to run a campaign, at to the lowest degree when he is at the heart of it. Certain he has a lot of help from a sympathetic and sycophantic media. But Obama and his squad ... know how to make the other guy ... the issue."
Goldstein shakes his caput over the performance of Romney (and John McCain in 2008), and he doubts most of the 2022 contenders every bit well (making an exception for Scott Walker).
Four U.South. presidents have completed a second term since that became the limit, and iii of them might well have had a shot at winning again: Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
Eisenhower was notwithstanding pop in 1960, despite ill wellness, and his vice president (Richard Nixon) came inside a whisker of succeeding him that year. Reagan nearly certainly would have been re-elected in 1988, when his vice president (George H.W. Bush) did, in fact, win.
Clinton in 2000 had survived impeachment and ridden adept economic times to an approval rating well over lx pct. Sure enough, his vice president (Al Gore) won the popular vote for president that year past half a million votes (while losing the Electoral College by 1 state).
In each of those three elections, the crucial chemical element was the nominee offered upwardly by the political party out of ability. For many voters, those nominees helped brand the prospect of a third term for the retiring incumbent look pretty good.
One thing to acquit in mind: If information technology were possible for Obama to run again, he would presumably benefit from the continuing shift in voter demographics. Since Reagan's first victory in 1980, the pct of the presidential vote bandage by not-Hispanic whites has fallen from nigh 90 to 72 percent — or nearly 2 percent on boilerplate in each election.
That is a big reason why Republicans have won the pop vote merely once in the past six presidential cycles. Assuming this change in the electorate continues apace, the Obama of 2022 would start with an even greater edge than the Obama of 2008 or 2012.
And then count Obama out in 2016, because the Constitution says no. Even if the voters might not.
Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/07/29/427207032/could-president-obama-win-a-third-term
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