Can Barack Obama Run for President Again?
President Obama speaks in Federal democratic republic of ethiopia. While there, he noted that in the U.Due south., presidents can't run for more than two terms. But if they could, he said, he'd win. Mulugeta Ayene/AP hide caption
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Mulugeta Ayene/AP
President Obama speaks in Federal democratic republic of ethiopia. While at that place, 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 practise of leaders overstaying their terms in office.
"When a leader tries to change the rules in the middle of the game just to stay in office, it risks instability and strife," Obama said, enlightened that the president of Burundi, seated nearby, had recently defied that country's 2-term limit.
Obama pointed to the shining example of Nelson Mandela, the outset black president of South Africa, who left role on schedule and transferred ability peacefully.
Obama also pointed to himself.
"I actually recollect I'chiliad a pretty practiced president," he said with a smile. "I recall if I ran I could win. But I can't. ... The law is the police force, and no one person is above the law, not fifty-fifty the president."
The constabulary the president mentioned is the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, limiting a president to two terms. Information technology was ratified in 1951, in a kind of delayed reaction to the epochal presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won his 4th term in 1944.
Obama was talking about African leaders, but back in united states, that context was ofttimes 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 as a dark hint that he plans to practise just what he was denouncing.
Wrote one commenter identified every bit "Snowleopard" on The Blaze: "Honestly, I await that Obama volition find some excuse to nullify the side by side elections, and declare himself as President for Life ... "
"Sargeking" heard much the same bulletin: "He has ignored our Constitution from solar day one since 2008, why should he amend his means now? In fact, I harbor the thought that he's waiting for some major consequence that will posture him in a 'holdover' for the duration."
Some commenters worried nigh Obama finagling a 3rd term by some back-door maneuver, such as having kickoff lady Michelle Obama run for president — or possibly past becoming vice president to a President Joe Biden.
But even those who do non imagine a palace coup in the making might well dispute the president's boast about winning over again.
A 3rd term, really? With all the controversy over Obamacare and the Iran deal and executive orders on clearing? With an approval number that's virtually always below 50 percent, and other measures of the national mood lukewarm at best?
Well, information technology's an exercise in pure speculation. But it is a question with real relevance for Hillary Clinton, or whomever the Democrats wind up nominating. Considering that nominee will inevitably exist said to be running for "Obama's tertiary term."
Let's say you combine three polling numbers: the president'due south chore-approval ratings, the national "correct management-wrong track" score and the "generic ballot" for Congress (a choice between the parties). Obama's continuing by these data points right now is about where information technology was in the summer of 2012, less than half dozen months before he swamped Mitt Romney in the Electoral Higher.
The deviation is, of class, that when y'all go from polling to an actual election, you run against an actual opponent. And the question of re-election becomes: "Compared to what?"
That thought weighed on blogger Aaron Goldstein on the bourgeois The American Spectator's website. While dreading the idea of another Obama term, Goldstein wasn't certain the voters would agree.
"Say what you will nigh Obama," Goldstein wrote. "The human being knows how to run a entrada, at least when he is at the center of it. Sure 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 head over the performance of Romney (and John McCain in 2008), and he doubts most of the 2016 contenders besides (making an exception for Scott Walker).
4 U.S. presidents have completed a second term since that became the limit, and three of them might well take had a shot at winning again: Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
Eisenhower was still popular in 1960, despite ill health, and his vice president (Richard Nixon) came within a whisker of succeeding him that yr. Reagan almost 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 good economic times to an approval rating well over sixty per centum. Sure enough, his vice president (Al Gore) won the pop vote for president that year by one-half a million votes (while losing the Balloter Higher by one land).
In each of those three elections, the crucial element was the nominee offered up by the party out of power. For many voters, those nominees helped make the prospect of a third term for the retiring incumbent look pretty good.
One thing to bear in mind: If it were possible for Obama to run again, he would presumably benefit from the continuing shift in voter demographics. Since Reagan's outset victory in 1980, the pct of the presidential vote bandage by not-Hispanic whites has fallen from near 90 to 72 percent — or about 2 pct on average in each election.
That is a big reason why Republicans have won the popular vote but once in the past half dozen presidential cycles. Assuming this change in the electorate continues apace, the Obama of 2016 would kickoff with an even greater edge than the Obama of 2008 or 2012.
So count Obama out in 2016, considering 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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