What is the social context in which the proposal of and later ratification of the 22nd amendment happened? Was this a "political class" response to the populist fervor for FDR after having won 4 elections? Is it related to the mounting Red Scare? What were the conditions under which the government, or people in it, felt that we needed to consider limiting presidential terms?
This question came up about six months ago and here is the answer I wrote.
The short version is that there had long been a movement to enact presidential term limits as far back as Andrew Jackson, and term limits later became a platform position of the Republican Party but it didn't become a pressing issue until FDR had ran for and won his third and fourth terms.
The Republicans took over the House and Senate after the 1946 midterms, and the 22nd Amendment was one of the very first things they passed when they were seated at the beginning of 1947.
But being a Constitutional Amendment, it had pretty wide support among Democrats, too, which is how it got passed. It was partisan, but not particularly contentious. The Republicans had nowhere near a supermajority to pass it alone, so they relied on Democrats to get it passed. Thus, there's language in the amendment that grandfathered in the current president (Truman at the time it was ratified) into the old system. And they essentially traded it for the Presidential Succession Act that Truman was advocating for, which itself was essentially added into the Constitution later on as the 25th Amendment.
A more detailed explanation with sources is contained in the link above. I hope this helps!
EDIT: I just re-read my previous response, and one of the links to one of the sources is broken. Here then is a repost of the March 17, 1940, article in the Washington Post that detailed efforts to enact presidential term limits in the ~150 years of U.S. history before the 22nd Amendment was passed.
