In the recent British election campaign, David Cameron pledged to serve just two terms as prime minister. The way he put it was, “Terms are like shredded wheat.” (See this article.) “Two are wonderful, but three might just be too many.”
I must say, it never would have occurred to me to say it that way. No wonder he’s so fit?
In any event, Cameron’s remark put me in mind of something Jeb Bush told me. I interviewed him in 2011 and asked him whether Florida’s governor was limited to two terms. Yes, he said. Is that a good thing? I asked. Yes, he answered.
He talked about his friend John Rowland, who had been governor of Connecticut. In his third term, he resigned while under investigation for corruption. He went to prison. On the day Rowland went in, Bush called him and said he was praying for him. Rowland then asked him something kind of out of the blue. “Do you have term limits in Florida?” Yes, Bush answered. (He was then in his second term.) “That’s good,” said Rowland. “Nothing good happens in a third term.”
P.S. Rowland had seemed on the straight and narrow after prison. Leading a productive life, as Jeb said in our interview. Just recently — this is flabbergasting — he was sentenced to prison yet again. More corruption.
P.P.S. I acknowledge that, in his third term, FDR provided some serious leadership versus the Axis.
P.P.P.S. Like Reagan, I was always against the Twenty-second Amendment, which limits a president to two terms. (The Gipper always said that, once he was out of office, he’d go back on “the mashed-potato circuit” to campaign for its repeal.) But after Clinton and Obama . . . I dunno . . .