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From: Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: [OT] Trump's third term
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2025 11:28:25 -0400
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On 2025-03-31 10:49 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
> Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
>> 2025-03-30 11:30 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>>> Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
>>>> 2025-03-30 10:05 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>>>>> Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
> 
>>>>>> I see that Trump has mused about running for a third term. This CBC
>>>>>> article explains why that couldn't happen and suggests that this puts an
>>>>>> end to the discussion.
> 
>>>>>> https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-third-term-president-constitutional-1.7497480
> 
>>>>>> For some strange reason - ignorance, I expect - they complete ignore a
>>>>>> perfectly legal way to get Trump a third term: amend the 22nd amendment
>>>>>> to increase the number of terms or repeal that amendment altogether.
> 
>>>>>> If I remember correctly, he'd need to get the approval of 3/4 of the
>>>>>> states and 2/3 of both chambers of Congress to agree and they'd only
>>>>>> have a set number of years to do it but if Trump really is as popular as
>>>>>> he thinks he is, that should be quite possible.
> 
>>>>> The set number of years was a characteristic of specific amendments
>>>>> proposed in Congress but not others. It's not clear if that's
>>>>> constitutional.
> 
>>>> Fair enough. I was remembering the ERA which *almost* passed but fell
>>>> slightly short. As I recall, they gave it an extra few years but it
>>>> still fell short.
> 
>>> ERA may have passed as additional state legislatures voted in favor
>>> after the expiration.
> 
>>>>> Good luck to Trump on his quest to become dictator.
> 
>>>> Was FDR a dictator when he ran for his third and fourth terms?
> 
>>> There are historians who have argued that FDR was part of the pre-WWII
>>> trend of countries that had been democracies turning toward autocracy.
>>> Also, FDR never told the voters that he was way too sick to be president
>>> when he ran for that fourth term.
> 
>> Roosevelt running for a fourth term when he was at death's door was, of
>> course, morally wrong. So was Wilson failing to resign when he was
>> massively incapacitated for many months during WWI and simply let his
>> wife run things. Unfortunately, both acts were perfectly legal.
> 
> I don't think so. In Wilson's case, it's known that there were times he
> wasn't making decisions. His wife and personal physician were acting on
> his behalf. That's illegal.

Did his wife and doctor consult Wilson about the various issues and 
merely pass on his decisions or was he completely uncommunicative so 
that they just took their best guesses about what he would have done had 
he been fit? I don't have a real problem with the former but the latter 
is obviously not cool. Simply passing on decisions he made has very 
little to distinguish itself from him passing a handwritten message to 
an underling.

> If the public had known in either case, we'd
> have gotten the 25th Amendment earlier than Eisenhower's heart attack.
> This was clearly a scenario the Founding Fathers hadn't anticipated,
> that a president could become incapacitated for an indefinite period of
> time without dying and there should have been a provision for temporary
> transfer of power.
> 
It's hard to blame them though. You simply can't anticipate every 
possible situation years - or centuries - in advance. Now, if a similar 
situation had happened within living memory of the Founding Fathers, 
they might have chosen to write laws to handle it.

Oh wait, there *was* a precedent that would have been known to them! 
King George III was effectively incapacitated for many years with what 
was believed now to be either porphyria or bipolar disorder. There was a 
play and movie about it: The Madness of King George. The Wikipedia 
article about George III isn't clear on when he bouts of madness began 
but they finally became so severe that his son served in his stead as 
Prince Regent in 1810 and finally replaced him permanently in 1820. That 
was obviously too late for the first draft of the Constitution but 
*could* have served as inspiration for an Amendment to deal with 
comparable problems in America.

> It's also bizarre that there was no provision to fill of office of Vice
> President.
>
Agreed.


>> Maybe the laws - or even the Constitution - should be amended to force
>> every Presidential and VP candidate to pass a thorough medical (and
>> mental) exam before they can be put on a Presidential/VP ballot and also
>> pass an annual physical.
> 
> The voters too? When these things are known, they may ignore the
> problem.
> 
>> . . .

Tests for voters have always been controversial and difficult. We can't 
seem to agree on much in the way of minimum qualifications beyond age 
and citizenship and even those are contested from some quarters. Other 
limits, like education, property ownership, or other things always seem 
to get struck down as unreasonable limitations.

Yet it's always tempting to add things to the current qualifications 
given the horrific choices voters seem prone to making. Case in point: 
if the polls are to be believed, the Liberals are poised to WIN the 
federal election in this country despite Mark Carney being even more 
fanatic about de-industrializing our country than Trudeau was. Just 
three months ago, just about everyone was certain that the next election 
would be a massive Conservative win with the Liberals reduced to under a 
dozen seats. Somehow, hundreds of thousands of my fellow Canadians have 
let themselves be deluded into thinking that Carney was somehow "better" 
than Poilievre.

I feel an urgent need to do SOMETHING to wake up my fellow Canadians or, 
failing that, to keep the idiots from voting but I can't think of a way 
to do either one. If ten years of Liberal misgovernment isn't enough to 
educate them, what can I possibly do?

-- 
Rhino