Re: [OT] Trump's third term

On 2025-03-31 11:19 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

On 2025-03-31 12:01 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

shawn <nanoflower@notforg.m.a.i.l.com> wrote:

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 22:49:20 -0400, Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com>:

On 2025-03-30 10:05 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

 

I see that Trump has mused about running for a third term. This CBC
article explains why that couldn't happen and suggests that this puts an
end to the discussion.

 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-third-term-president-constitutional-1.7497480

 

For some strange reason - ignorance, I expect - they complete ignore a
perfectly legal way to get Trump a third term: amend the 22nd amendment
to increase the number of terms or repeal that amendment altogether.

 

If I remember correctly, he'd need to get the approval of 3/4 of the
states and 2/3 of both chambers of Congress to agree and they'd only
have a set number of years to do it but if Trump really is as popular as
he thinks he is, that should be quite possible.

 

The set number of years was a characteristic of specific amendments
proposed in Congress but not others. It's not clear if that's
constitutional.

 

Fair enough. I was remembering the ERA which *almost* passed but fell
slightly short. As I recall, they gave it an extra few years but it
still fell short.

 

Good luck to Trump on his quest to become dictator.

 

Was FDR a dictator when he ran for his third and fourth terms?

 

No, because it was permissible for FDR to run for those terms.

 

By the low bar of it wasn't unconstitutional, then you don't believe
Viktor Orban is a dictator. Right?

 

. . .

 

My perception is that elections in Hungary are not yet believed to be
corrupt so that a sufficiently popular candidate *could* still defeat
him at the polls. If that is true, then I wouldn't call Orban a dictator.

 He made subtle gradual changes in civil law to give himself political
advantage and completely changed the judiciary to eliminate neutral
judges, replacing them with his partisans. And yes, it's very difficult
to participate in an election as a member of the opposition.
 He simply took a number of years to rewrite laws instead of just
declaring the constitution no longer in force and presenting a
replacement constitution.
 The effect was the same. It simply took a lot longer to close society.

I don't follow Hungary very closely so I didn't know any of that. I saw stories when they had their last election that implied the opposition candidate had a real chance, although he ultimately lost, so I didn't realize things were quite so dire.

 In Poland, they had a dictator for close to a decade but somehow got the
government out and they're trying to put laws back to the way they were.
 

The "somehow" in that sentence is that they had an election which the PiS (Law and Justice Party) lost. A presidential election is on the near horizon and the PiS candidate has made a fool of himself, which may cost him the election.

I would have said the same about Erdogan until the last week or so but
he seems to have borrowed a page from the Dictator's Handbook by locking
up his chief credible rival.

 He's had mass arrests of presumed political opponents on flimsy excuses.
The army is no longer a neutral force in society. The top officers are
all his partisans.
>

I've learned over the years that military coups are not always as bad as we tend to think. In many countries, they are essentially the government of last resort, meaning that if the civilian government messes up badly enough, people actually count on the military to take over, clean things up, and then restore civilian rule. That's essentially what happened when the Muslim Brotherhood president, Morsi, attracted the biggest demonstrations in human history - substantially bigger than anything we've seen in the West - and the military toppled him. But the top Field Marshal apparently liked running things and ran to replace Morsi as a civilian. He's still in charge today.
If Erdogan "owns" the top officers though, the Turks may end up having to wait until he dies for some relief. Even that is no guarantee that his successor will be better. Mugabe got replaced by the head of his secret police, a notoriously ruthless man, who still governs. But he's old so maybe *his* successor will be better. For what it's worth, most analysts think that Putin's successor will be much the same as Putin so Russia is not likely to get better any time soon.
--
Rhino