Barack Obama’s ‘discontented ghost’ — 4 reasons he’ll be a new kind of ex-president

The Constitution as amended in 1951 limits an individual’s length of service as Chief Executive to no more than two terms or ten years if serving out the remaining “two years of a term to which some other person was elected President.”

But it wasn’t always this way.

One early critique of the 1,023 words that created the presidency in Article II was that none of them prohibited those who held the office from running for an unlimited number of four-year terms. “Wherein does this president, invested with his powers and prerogatives,” one opponent to ratification of the document wrote in 1787, “essentially differ from the king of Great Britain?”

{mosads}Federalist supporters of continued eligibility argued otherwise. The ability to repeatedly seek office as head of the Executive branch would translate to reoccurring service for well-regarded presidents and retirement — and silence — for the unpopular ones.

What the Framers feared most in a term-limited executive was adored former presidents serving as the ever-present peanut gallery on the current occupant.

“Would it promote the peace of the community, or the stability of the government,” Alexander Hamilton wrote in 1788, “to have half a dozen men who had had credit enough to be raised to the seat of the supreme magistracy, wandering among the people like discontented ghosts?”

Today, our fellow citizens bear witness to a unique circumstance in having the three most recent occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue all having served two terms and each of them elected to the office before the age of 55.

This not only leaves Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama as historically young presidents but, perhaps more important to our contemporary situation, historically young former presidents.

Ex-presidents are a unique breed. When they are not establishing libraries, serving humanitarian causes or flying to the rescue in Saturday Night Live cartoons, they tend to enjoy the perks of post-presidential life by removing themselves from the immediacy of overt political participation while Oval Office occupants can count on the chorus of nearly 319 million other citizens serving as critics for their every move.

Traditionally the former presidents, despite their leverage and status, don’t join the choir.

The day after the still-contentious Bush v. Gore decision was announced to a divided nation by a divided Supreme Court in 2000, President Bill Clinton released a statement saying, in part, that “all of us have a responsibility to support President-Elect Bush and to unite our country in the search for common ground.”

In March 2009,  former President Bush said that Obama, sworn in just two months prior, “deserves my silence.” As Bush’s tenure was repeatedly trampled by his successor, the Texan held his tongue.

In fact, over the past eight years we have heard few conspicuous political rumblings from either No. 42 and No. 43 — until recently; one spent some time during the most recent campaign stumping for his brother while the other campaigned vigorously for his wife.

Although Barack Obama will be vacating the White House grounds at noon on Jan. 20, 2017, don’t count on the future ex-president to fade away into the immediate sunset like his predecessors.

“I’m still fired up and I’m still ready to go,” Obama said in a recent call with Democrats. Many interpreted this as his unorthodox pledge, despite being a defender of Trump’s president-elect status, to become the Democratic counterpunch to The Donald once the New York billionaire gets behind the desk himself.

There are four factors that make it a safe bet to take Barack Obama at his word that he will be a “discontented ghost” in his post-presidential life:

1. His Age

President Obama will be 55 years and 169 days old when he leaves office at noon on Jan. 20. This makes him the third-youngest ex-Commander-in-Chief who served two full terms in United States history.

Ulysses Grant and Bill Clinton each vacated the White House at 54 years old. His youth makes for the possibility of a long and potentially active Oval Office afterlife.

2. His Popularity

Even after a year in which Americans witnessed a sitting commander-in-chief campaigning with unprecedented zeal and vitriol to name his own successor, President Obama’s weekly average popularity according to Gallup is an enviable 55 percent.

The Democratic drubbing in November — as in 2010 and 2014 — tells us that this popularity doesn’t translate to help for his party at the polls, but it does serve as a reminder that as ex-president he will enjoy personal appeal that is most likely to increase as he gets more selective in the issues he will address in the years to come.

3. His Partisanship

President Obama has been a uniquely partisan president. He will no doubt be a uniquely partisan ex-president.

Alternately addressing or failing to address issues that confronted his administration, he was never reluctant to champion those causes that would advance Democratic party interests.

The 44th president was never far from his community-organizer roots and we can expect that he will take the partisanship that was part of his DNA prior to the presidency and apply it to his post-Oval life with as much energy on a larger platform.

4. His Legacy

“All the progress we’ve made is at stake in this election,” President Obama said often in his speeches supporting his would-be Democratic successor. “My name may not be on the ballot, but our progress is.”

Campaigning for Hillary Clinton as a referendum on his presidency and her failure to win the election has added a sense of urgency to his post-presidential endeavors.

With his signature law and many of his executive orders facing significant questions about their future sustainability, Obama will be forced to remain a presence to help self-write the immediate legacy of his tenure.

Whether he ultimately serves one term or two, Americans already know the length of Donald Trump’s  former-presidency will be shorter than those of Clinton, Bush and Obama.

Not only will he be the oldest president to take a first-term oath, he will be sworn in an average of 20 years older than his three immediate predecessors.

As much as he will no doubt come to detest Obama lingering on the national scene past his presidency, it’s a safe bet that if Trump leaves office with the amount of vigor with which he came in, his former-presidency will show him also being a “discontented ghost” for his own successor as well.

James Coll is an adjunct professor of American and Constitutional history at Hofstra University and the founder of ChangeNYS.org, a not-for-profit dedicated to the promotion of non-partisan civic education and political reform in our state.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.