Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution
The amendment prohibits any individual who has been elected president twice from being elected again. Under the amendment, an individual who fills an unexpired presidential term lasting greater than two years is also prohibited from winning election as president more than once. Scholars debate whether the amendment prohibits affected individuals from succeeding to the presidency under any circumstances or whether it only applies to presidential elections.
Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower
In January 1953, Senator John W. Bricker of Ohio re-introduced the Bricker Amendment, which would limit the president's treaty making power and ability to enter into executive agreements with foreign nations. Fears that the steady stream of post-World War II-era international treaties, pacts, covenants, and executive agreements entered into by the U.S. government were supplanting the U.S. Constitution as the supreme law of the land, and undermining the nation's sovereignty, united isolationists, conservative Democrats, most Republicans, along with numerous professional groups and civic organizations behind the amendment. Eisenhower opposed the amendment, believing that it would weaken the president and would hamper the handling of the nation's foreign affairs to such a degree, that it would be impossible for the U.S. to exercise leadership on the global stage. Eisenhower worked with Senate Minority Lyndon B. Johnson to defeat the amendment. Although the amendment started out with 56 co-sponsors, it went down to defeat in the U.S. Senate in 1954, with a 42-50 vote. Later in 1954, a watered-down version of the amendment missed the required two-thirds majority in the Senate by one vote. This episode proved to be the last hurrah for the isolationist Republicans, as younger conservatives increasingly turned to an internationalism based on aggressive anti-communism, typified by Senator Barry Goldwater.