Bill Clinton is just 56 years old, and with two terms as president under his belt he can be forgiven for thinking that his political career peaked too early, especially as George W. Bush and the Republicans are now everywhere ascendant.
Nostalgia for the Oval Office and the political fray might explain why Mr. Clinton has taken mild issue with that piece of constitutional good sense called the 22nd Amendment.
As part of an informal discussion at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston last week, Mr. Clinton said the 22nd amendment, which limits presidents to no more than two terms in their lifetime, should be modified.
According to The Associated Press, he said such a move would not affect him, but, "There may come a time when we have elected a president at age 45 or 50 and then 20 years later the country comes up with the same sort of problems the president faced before, and the people would like to bring that man or woman back." He added that he did not feel strongly about the issue.
That's just as well, because in fact his suggestion is ill-advised -- and Bill Clinton is the poster child of why that is so. While Mr. Clinton's sins increasingly seem minor compared with the doubtful veracity of the Bush administration's justification of the war with Iraq and its infringement on civil liberties post 9/11, there is no denying that the Clinton administration was exceptionally controversial.
A break from that divisiveness was one of the happier fruits of the 22nd Amendment. But even if Mr. Clinton had never been born to affront conservatives, there is much to be said for limiting anyone to two terms as president. Unlike even the most powerful member of Congress, the president embodies an entire branch of the federal government and serves as head of state. That is a unique power rightly limited to two terms.
George Washington was the first to realize it, and he established a precedent that lasted until Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in the exceptional circumstances of the lingering Depression and gathering war clouds, sought a third (and later a fourth) term.
While the 22nd Amendment came as the revenge of Republicans in Congress, it also had the effect of keeping a couple of popular GOP presidents -- Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan -- in check.
The bully pulpit of the presidency could be transformed into a sanctuary for bullies if the terms were endless. Thank the 22nd Amendment that it is not.
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