WARNING! ANOTHER LONG AND BORING MISS BARBARA HISTORY LESSON!
Most Americans who have a working knowledge of U.S. history know that in the Fall of 1796, as he was nearing the end of his second term, George Washington gave his famous "Farewell Address," in which he announced he would not seek a third term.
By doing so, Washington set a precedent that a president should serve no more than two terms, and that precedent was scrupulously followed for close to 150 years, until Franklin Roosevelt ran for, and won, a third term in 1940.
A few years after FDR died in office, Congress passed and the states ratified the 22nd Amendment, which constitutionally limited a U.S. president to two full terms.
Here's the problem: That story has little basis in fact.
The U.S. Constitution makes no mention of presidential term limits, and in the Constitutional convention, while the president's term was initially slated as one seven-year term with no possibility of re-election, it was ultimately decided that the president would serve a four-year term, and be eligible for re-election. That proposal was agreed to nearly unanimously.
It's true that George Washing retired from the presidency after two terms, and refused to run for a third term. However, Washington never cited this as a precedent, nor did he assert -- neither in the Farewell Address nor anywhere else -- that a president should not serve more than two terms.
When Washington retired from the presidency at the end of his second term, he did so for personal reasons. On June 17, 1775, the Continental Congress named Washington Commander in Chief, and on March 4, 1797, George Washington’s second term as president ended. During that entire span of 22 years, Washington remained in almost constant service to his country. He was tired, and he wanted to retire to his home in Virginia. More to the point, Washington feared that he might die in office if he ran for an won a third term, thereby giving the impression that presidents should serve for life.
In January 1808, the final year of his second term, Thomas Jefferson announced that he would not seek a third term. He did not cite Washington’s precedent, but rather, the same reasons as Washington:
"I am sensible of that decline which advancing years bring on: and feeling their Physical, I ought not to doubt their Mental effect. happy, if I am the first to perceive and to obey this admonition of nature, and to solicit a retreat from cares too great for the wearied faculties of age."
Nor have any of the other two-term presidents between Jefferson and FDR -- Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Grant, Cleveland, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, and Coolidge -- cite Washington’s stepping down after two terms as a precedent.
In fact, Franklin Roosevelt was the second president with that last name to run for a third term. Teddy Roosevelt succeeded to the presidency in 1901 when McKinley was assassinated only a few months after beginning his second term, and TR served out that term, and then won a second term in his own right in 1904. In 1908, he declined to run for a third term, but in 1912, he did, in fact run for a third term.
Teddy Roosevelt wasn't the first president to ignore Washington's "precedent." Nearing the end of his second term in 1876, Grant considered running for a third term, and only decided not to after being convinced otherwise by party officials. Four years later, Grant ran for a third term in 1880. He was the overwhelming front-runner at the 1880 GOP Convention in Chicago in June, he led by a wide margin on the first ballot, and on 35 subsequent ballots. But he failed to earn the needed majority to win the nomination. Finally, James Garfield was named as a compromise candidate on the 26th ballot, and Grant reluctantly released his delegates, and Garfield won the nomination.
In 1896 Grover Cleveland, who was completing his second (non-consecutive) term, also tried to win a third term. At the July convention, Cleveland's hopes were steamrolled by a young, out-spoken Midwestern populist, and Will Jennings Bryant won the nomination unanimously on the fifth ballot.
In other words, "Washington's precedent" never existed. It was never cited, it was never followed, and, despite being an unofficial precedent, it was deliberately ignored at least three times before FDR won the 1940 election.