Could Obama Run Again Since He Has Left Office

President Obama speaks in Ethiopia. While at that place, he noted that in the U.S., presidents can't run for more 2 terms. Just if they could, he said, he'd win. Mulugeta Ayene/AP hibernate caption

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Mulugeta Ayene/AP

President Obama speaks in Ethiopia. While in that location, he noted that in the U.S., presidents can't run for more than than two terms. Only if they could, he said, he'd win.

Mulugeta Ayene/AP

President Obama was giving the final voice communication 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 role.

"When a leader tries to alter the rules in the middle of the game just to stay in office, it risks instability and strife," Obama said, aware that the president of Burundi, seated nearby, had recently defied that country'southward two-term limit.

Obama pointed to the shining example of Nelson Mandela, the first black president of Due south Africa, who left office on schedule and transferred power peacefully.

Obama also pointed to himself.

"I actually call back I'm a pretty good president," he said with a smile. "I think if I ran I could win. But I can't. ... The law is the police, and no ane person is higher up the police, not fifty-fifty the president."

The police the president mentioned is the 22nd Amendment to the U.Southward. Constitution, limiting a president to two 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 dorsum in the States, that context was often lost in heated reactions to his merits to re-electability.

The very idea ignited digital loftier dudgeon. News websites featuring the story were shortly festooned with countless reader comments, many interpreting Obama's argument equally a dark hint that he plans to do just what he was denouncing.

Wrote one commenter identified as "Snowleopard" on The Blaze: "Honestly, I expect that Obama will find some excuse to nullify the next elections, and declare himself as President for Life ... "

"Sargeking" heard much the same message: "He has ignored our Constitution from day one since 2008, why should he better his ways now? In fact, I harbor the idea that he'south waiting for some major upshot that will posture him in a 'holdover' for the duration."

Some commenters worried about Obama finagling a third term by some back-door maneuver, such as having first lady Michelle Obama run for president — or perhaps by becoming vice president to a President Joe Biden.

But fifty-fifty those who do not imagine a palace coup in the making might well dispute the president's avowal about winning again.

A third term, really? With all the controversy over Obamacare and the Islamic republic of iran bargain and executive orders on immigration? With an approval number that's nearly always beneath 50 percent, and other measures of the national mood lukewarm at best?

Well, it's an do in pure speculation. But information technology is a question with real relevance for Hillary Clinton, or whomever the Democrats air current upwards nominating. Because that nominee will inevitably be said to be running for "Obama'southward third term."

Let's say y'all combine 3 polling numbers: the president'southward job-approval ratings, the national "correct direction-wrong rail" score and the "generic ballot" for Congress (a choice between the parties). Obama's standing by these data points right now is about where information technology was in the summer of 2012, less than six months before he swamped Mitt Romney in the Balloter College.

The deviation is, of course, that when you lot become from polling to an actual election, you lot run against an actual opponent. And the question of re-election becomes: "Compared to what?"

That thought weighed on blogger Aaron Goldstein on the conservative The American Spectator's website. While dreading the thought of another Obama term, Goldstein wasn't sure the voters would agree.

"Say what y'all will well-nigh Obama," Goldstein wrote. "The man knows how to run a campaign, at to the lowest degree when he is at the center of information technology. Certain he has a lot of help from a sympathetic and sycophantic media. But Obama and his team ... know how to brand the other guy ... the upshot."

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).

Four U.S. presidents have completed a 2d term since that became the limit, and three of them might well have had a shot at winning again: Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

Eisenhower was notwithstanding popular in 1960, despite ill health, and his vice president (Richard Nixon) came within a whisker of succeeding him that year. Reagan virtually certainly would have been re-elected in 1988, when his vice president (George H.Due west. Bush) did, in fact, win.

Clinton in 2000 had survived impeachment and ridden good economical times to an approving rating well over sixty percent. Sure enough, his vice president (Al Gore) won the popular vote for president that year by half a million votes (while losing the Electoral Higher by one country).

In each of those three elections, the crucial chemical element was the nominee offered up past the party out of ability. For many voters, those nominees helped make the prospect of a third term for the retiring incumbent look pretty good.

1 matter to comport in mind: If it were possible for Obama to run over again, he would presumably benefit from the continuing shift in voter demographics. Since Reagan's first victory in 1980, the percentage of the presidential vote bandage past non-Hispanic whites has fallen from about 90 to 72 percentage — or about two percent on boilerplate in each election.

That is a big reason why Republicans have won the pop vote only once in the past 6 presidential cycles. Assuming this change in the electorate continues apace, the Obama of 2016 would showtime with an even greater edge than the Obama of 2008 or 2012.

And so count Obama out in 2016, because the Constitution says no. Even if the voters might not.

tuckershumbery.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/07/29/427207032/could-president-obama-win-a-third-term

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