FDR is always rated as one of the best presidents in the country, so why was the 22nd amendment (limiting terms in office to two) passed?

At the time the 22nd Amendment was ratified, it was a partisan issue, although quite obviously not a particularly contentious one.

The two term limit was set as tradition with George Washington, but it was always a custom and never a law, despite calls by Thomas Jefferson and others for presidential tenure to be addressed Constitutionally. A March 17, 1940, article in the Washington Post tallied up fifteen serious attempts by one or the other houses of Congress to limit presidential tenure since the adoption of the Constitution.

For the first hundred years of the country, the issue was one that would be brought up in Congress every now and again, but it never got much traction mostly due to the issue never really arising. Jefferson and Jackson had both publicly come out against third terms, nor did Madison or Monroe seek one either.

That changed in 1880, when Ulysses S. Grant sought the Republican nomination for an unprecedented third (non-consecutive) term. But that worked itself out when he didn't win the nomination and didn't run in the general election.

Same thing happened in 1912. Teddy Roosevelt had served most of McKinley's second term, then a full term of his own, then stepped down, then sought to win the nomination of the Republican Party from his successor William Howard Taft. He lost the nomination, ran as a third party, and lost again. Woodrow Wilson was elected president, and when he was asked to weigh in on the issue, he said that presidents shouldn't serve for more than two terms, but that it shouldn't be made part of the Constitution, either. Let the people decide at the polls.

The biggest threat of a possible third presidential term in at least a hundred years was with Calvin Coolidge. He had served most of Harding's term, won his own, and if he had run for another term, a lot of Republicans would have loved to nominate him. And, seeing as fellow Republican Herbert Hoover won that election, it was very conceivable that he would have won a third term. But the issue was averted when Coolidge declared in the late summer of 1927 that he did not "choose to run for President in 1928".

The wording was curious since it surely implied that Coolidge felt he had the option to do so if he wanted, and that the social custom of two terms was, by the 1920s, not well respected anymore.

Despite Coolidge's statement, there were efforts to draft him, while others in his own party sought to stop that from happening. The leading opponent of third terms was Coolidge's fellow Republican, Senator Robert La Follette, Jr., from Wisconsin. This was a different time for Republicans, remember, and La Follette was also the co-founder of the Wisconsin Progressive Party, and the son of the late Robert La Follette, Sr., who had just run against Coolidge in 1924 on the Progressive Party ticket and won the electoral votes of his home state of Wisconsin.

Senator La Follette, Jr., was philosophically opposed to third terms, and drafted a Senate resolution in February 1927 against them to warn Coolidge off of running again. Coolidge decided against running for his own personal reasons, but after his statement, there continued to be efforts to draft him, which he had at least given some private indication he wasn't entirely opposed to it.

La Follette then revived his anti-third term resolution, quoted in the February 11, 1928, Atlanta Constitution as saying he was worried that Coolidge-ally and former RNC chairman Charles Hilles of New York "and other powerful factors in the party" were seeking to draft Coolidge and that it had become "apparent from statements by [Coolidge's] friends here that the President has not foreclosed his renomination".

To prevent this, on February 10, 1928, the Senate passed the La Follette Resolution which stated "that it is the sense of the Senate that the precedent established by Washington and other Presidents of the United States in retiring from the Presidential office after their second term has become by universal concurrence, a part of our republican system of government, and that any departure from this time-honored custom would be unwise, unpatriotic and fraught with peril to our free institutions."

The resolution passed 56-26 (more than two-thirds). The Democrats, not wanting to see a third Coolidge term, voted overwhelming in favor, 37-4. The Republicans were split, 18 voted in favor with La Follette, and 22 voting against. This put an end to any reconsiderations that Coolidge had to his "I do not choose" statement. A month later, the Wyoming Republican Party tried formally to draft him, but he publicly turned it down. Others in the party then began to seek the nomination, no doubt at least one or two of the La Follette Resolution supporters among them.

The issue remained dormant until 1940, when all signs pointed to FDR running for a third term. The same progressive faction of the Republican Party was the first to rail against it, and this time, they were able to get all the Republican Party to support the policy. But of course, this time, the Democrats were uniformly against it. As a March 9, 1940, letter to the Hartford Courant put it:

"From the tenor of the letters in today's Forum it is very evident that the Republicans are deeply worried about the forthcoming elections even at this early date. However, the Republicans are still handing out the same brand of nonsense they dished out at the outset of the Roosevelt Administration. [A Republican letter writer] still thinks we are about to be engulfed by a dictatorship. To avoid this so-called dictatorship, he suggests an amendment to the Constitution restricting the President's term of office to two terms of four years each. A noble suggestion, but why restrict the third term issue to the presidency [and not include other elected offices]?...What the Republicans are deeply worried over is the fact that President Roosevelt will undoubtedly be reelected if he runs next November...It is interesting to note to what extent these politicians will go to defeat President Roosevelt."

In other words, even among opponents of presidential term limits at that time, they could recognize the wisdom in it as a "noble suggestion", but opposed it in 1940 in part due to the curious timing of reviving the issue.

Nevertheless, the Republican Party made presidential term limits a plank in their 1940 campaign platform. They lost, FDR was reelected, and the Republicans kept it in their platform for the 1944 election as well. Once again, they lost, and FDR was reelected.

After his death and the end of World War II, the Republicans finally got control back of Congress (though not the Presidency) in 1946. Still running on that 1944 platform, one of their highest priorities was the passage of the 22nd Amendment as they came into power with the 80th Congress in 1947. Rep. Charles La Follette, Republican of Indiana (a third cousin of Robert Jr.'s), wrote an opinion piece in the Christian Science Monitor published before the election, on January 6, 1946, under the title "I Favor Restricting The President To Two Terms". He gave several reasons why this was a good idea, starting with:

"I believe that a tenure in excess of eight consecutive years is harmful to the development of a dynamic democratic society and potentially endangers its future maintenance."

He goes on to headline other points with "Fluidity of Leadership Will Be Encouraged" and "The Dangerous 'Leader-Complex' Will Be Checked".

A front page article in the New York Times from February 7, 1947, after the Amendment had been passed in the House, gave the reasoning from a couple others in the Republican leadership:

Representative Earl C. Michener, of Michigan, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, saw a long tenure as enabling the Chief Executive to get too firm a grip on the government machinery, leading to "irresponsible bureaucracy" and "over-concentration of power." A long-term President can gain influence over Congress and the judiciary as well, he maintained.

Representative Charles A. Halleck, of Indiana, majority leader, asserted the only object was to place "an unwritten law of the country firmly into the Constitution."

Opponents of the amendment, mostly Democrats, were characterized in the same article:

The Democrats argued generally that an amendment would shackle future generations, who in the event of another emergency might find it necessary to continue a President in office for more than two terms. They contended, moreover, that the issue had already been decided by the people when they had elected Franklin D. Roosevelt to a third and a fourth term.

Senator Scott W. Lucas summed up the Democratic opposition's point of view more succinctly, as quoted in the March 8, 1947, edition of the Chicago Tribune:

"Some people can't leave the dead alone! This is a slap at the ghost of Franklin D. Roosevelt because the people reelected him to a third and fourth term. It is an effort to repudiate his memory, his work, and his immortal services."

But the Democrats were split. Senators O'Connor, Overton, and McClellan supported the amendment because:

"...the office of the President had become so powerful that the incumbent could establish a dynasty if not restricted to two terms."

On February 4, 1947, the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee along with the votes of "conservative Democrats", according to the New York Times, brought the amendment to the House floor on a vote of 20-6. On February 6, the full House voted in favor of the amendment 285-121.

(...cont'd...)