FDR nominated for Unprecedented Third Term
On this day in 1940, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, who first took office in 1933 as America’s 32nd president, is
nominated for an unprecedentedthird term. Roosevelt, a Democrat, would
eventually be elected to a record four terms in office, the only U.S. president
to serve more than two terms.
Roosevelt was born January 30, 1882, in Hyde
Park, New York, and went on to serve as a New York state senator from 1911 to
1913, assistant secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1920 and governor of New
York from 1929 to 1932. In 1932, he defeated incumbent Herbert Hoover to be
elected president for the first time. During his first term, Roosevelt enacted
his New Deal social programs, which were aimed at lifting America out of the
Great Depression. In 1936, he won his second term in office by defeating Kansas
governor Alf Landon in a landslide.
On July 18, 1940, Roosevelt was nominated for
a third presidential term at the Democratic Party convention in Chicago. The
president received some criticism for running again because there was an
unwritten rule in American politics that no U.S. president should serve more
than two terms. Thecustom dated back to the country’s first president, George
Washington, who in 1796 declined to run for a third term in office.
Nevertheless, Roosevelt believed it was his duty to continue serving and lead
his country through the mounting crisis in Europe, where Hitler’s Nazi Germany
was on the rise. The president went on to defeat Republican Wendell Wilkie in
the general election, and his third term in office was dominated by America’s
involvement in World War II.
In 1944, with the war still in progress,
Roosevelt defeated New York governor Thomas Dewey for a fourth term in office.
However, the president was unable to complete the full term. On April 12, 1945,
Roosevelt, who had suffered from various health problems for years, died at age
63 in Warm Springs, Georgia. He was succeeded by Vice President Harry S.
Truman. On March 21, 1947, Congress passed the 22nd Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution, which stated that no person could be elected to the office of
president more than twice. The amendment was ratified by the required number of
states in 1951.