George Washington Understood the Perils of the Office

Dr. Brands is a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of the forthcoming “The American Patriarch: The Life of George Washington.”

George Washington’s presidency is known best for being the first, and then for establishing the tradition that presidents limit themselves to two terms. This standard held informally until Franklin Roosevelt was elected a third time in 1940, and a fourth in 1944, after which it was written into the Constitution as the 22nd Amendment.

In the........

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