An ex-President stands
precisely in the position of any other private citizen, and has not one
particle more power to secure a nomination or election than if he had
never held the office at all--indeed, he probably has less because of
the very fact that he has held the office. Therefore the reasoning on
which the anti-third term custom is based has no application whatever
to an ex-President, and no application whatever to anything except
consecutive terms. As a barrier of precaution against more than two
consecutive terms the custom embodies a valuable principle. Applied
in any other way it becomes a mere formula, and like all formulas
a potential source of mischievous confusion. Having this in mind, I
regarded the custom as applying practically, if not just as much, to a
President who had been seven and a half years in office as to one
who had been eight years in office, and therefore, in the teeth of a
practically unanimous demand from my own party that I accept another
nomination, and the reasonable certainty that the nomination would be
ratified at the polls, I felt that the substance of the custom applied
to me in 1908. On the other hand, it had no application whatever to any
human being save where it was invoked in the case of a man desiring a
third consecutive term.
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