SECOND TERMITIS

American presidents often run into trouble if they succeed in getting re-elected to a second term. Richard Nixon had his Watergate. Ronald Reagan had his Iran-Contra scandal. Bill Clinton had his Monica affair. And now President Bush has a prolonged war on his hands, as well as controversies about torturing detainees and warrantless eavesdropping on Americans.

Part of the trouble with second terms is that the president loses a primary element of accountability. The voters can no longer express their approval or disapproval at the ballot box. This can lead, in some presidents, to hubris, an overweening arrogance famous in Greek tragedies as a cause for the downfall of leaders.

In Mr. Bush’s case, becoming a lame duck seems to have damaged his administration’s strict bureaucratic discipline of his first term. Several leaks about highly secret government operations suggest that some officials have dared to take their objections to the newspapers. Republican members of Congress are increasingly willing

to oppose White House policies.

Two presidential scholars, James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn, wrote in The New York Times recently that, unlike other officials, Mr. Bush, in a sense, “has transcended the risks and rewards of American politics. He will not run again for office. The voters will not will not be able to thank him – or dump him.”

George Washington is widely believed to have started the two-term tradition, but he suggested in his farewell address that retirement was his personal preference. Thomas Jefferson declared that a termination was necessary to prevent a presidency for life. But Alexander Hamilton warned in 1788 that a term limit on the presidency would diminish “the inducements to good behavior” and would create a temptation toward “sordid views, to peculation, and in some instances to usurpation.”

The two-term limit was embodied in the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution in an uproar following Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election to a third and a fourth term. There was a brief effort to repeal the amendment to allow President Reagan to seek a third term, but

it was quickly dropped.

The two scholars, who teach at Williams College, note that many bipartisan proposals to repeal the 22nd Amendment have been introduced in Congress but have gone nowhere. They point to a current one that is buried in a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. “Oddly, both the current chairman of the committee, F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., of Wisconsin, and the former chairman, Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, both Republicans, have in the past cosponsored resolutions to repeal the amendment.”

As we gear up for the election of a new president, isn’t it high time that we consider abandoning an outmoded and potentially harmful tradition? Repealing an unwise amendment that was adopted in haste, would let the American people, through their democratic republic, choose their national executive as they please -and repeatedly if they please.