Is There Any Way Obama Can Be President Again

President Obama speaks in Federal democratic republic of ethiopia. While in that location, he noted that in the U.Due south., presidents tin can't run for more than two terms. Merely 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 2 terms. But if they could, he said, he'd win.

Mulugeta Ayene/AP

President Obama was giving the final speech of his Africa tour, offering a critique of the young democracies on that continent, singling out the all-as well-typical practise 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'south two-term limit.

Obama pointed to the shining case of Nelson Mandela, the get-go black president of S Africa, who left office on schedule and transferred ability peacefully.

Obama also pointed to himself.

"I really think I'k a pretty good president," he said with a grinning. "I recall if I ran I could win. But I can't. ... The police is the law, and no one person is above the law, not even the president."

The police force 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 back in usa, that context was frequently lost in heated reactions to his merits to re-electability.

The very thought ignited digital loftier dudgeon. News websites featuring the story were soon festooned with endless reader comments, many interpreting Obama'due south argument as a dark hint that he plans to exercise just what he was denouncing.

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

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

Some commenters worried about Obama finagling a 3rd term past some dorsum-door maneuver, such every bit 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 non imagine a palace insurrection in the making might well dispute the president'southward avowal about winning once again.

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

Well, it's an exercise in pure speculation. Only it is a question with real relevance for Hillary Clinton, or whomever the Democrats wind up nominating. Because that nominee volition inevitably be said to be running for "Obama'due south 3rd term."

Let'due south say yous combine three polling numbers: the president's task-approval ratings, the national "right direction-wrong track" score and the "generic ballot" for Congress (a selection betwixt the parties). Obama's standing past these data points correct now is about where it was in the summer of 2012, less than six months before he swamped Mitt Romney in the Electoral Higher.

The deviation is, of grade, that when you go from polling to an actual election, you run confronting 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 idea of some other Obama term, Goldstein wasn't sure the voters would hold.

"Say what you will about Obama," Goldstein wrote. "The homo knows how to run a entrada, at to the lowest degree when he is at the middle of it. 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 consequence."

Goldstein shakes his caput over the performance of Romney (and John McCain in 2008), and he doubts most of the 2016 contenders as well (making an exception for Scott Walker).

Four U.Due south. presidents have completed a second 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 yet popular in 1960, despite ill health, and his vice president (Richard Nixon) came within a whisker of succeeding him that year. Reagan nearly certainly would have been re-elected in 1988, when his vice president (George H.West. Bush) did, in fact, win.

Clinton in 2000 had survived impeachment and ridden expert economical times to an approving rating well over sixty percentage. Certain enough, his vice president (Al Gore) won the popular vote for president that year by half a 1000000 votes (while losing the Electoral College by one state).

In each of those three elections, the crucial chemical element was the nominee offered upwardly by the political party out of power. For many voters, those nominees helped make the prospect of a 3rd term for the retiring incumbent look pretty good.

1 thing to bear in heed: If it were possible for Obama to run once more, he would presumably do good from the continuing shift in voter demographics. Since Reagan'due south commencement victory in 1980, the percentage of the presidential vote cast by non-Hispanic whites has fallen from virtually ninety to 72 percent — or nigh 2 percent on average in each election.

That is a big reason why Republicans accept won the popular vote just one time in the by six presidential cycles. Assuming this change in the electorate continues chop-chop, the Obama of 2016 would offset with an fifty-fifty greater border than the Obama of 2008 or 2012.

So count Obama out in 2016, because the Constitution says no. Fifty-fifty if the voters might not.

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

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