Top 5 Reasons You Can’t Blame Franklin Roosevelt for Running for a 3rd Term in 1940

November 5, 1940, 80 years ago: President Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected to an unprecedented 3rd term as President. The Democrat defeats the Republican nominee, Wall Street lawyer Wendell L. Willkie, 449 Electoral Votes to 82, with 55 percent of the popular vote to 45.

Willkie wins only 10 States: His home State of Indiana, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and the 2 States that FDR ended up never winning in his 4 runs, Maine and Vermont.

Gee, maybe running a conservative businessman as their nominee for President isn't a good idea for the Republican Party. After all, they did it before with Herbert Hoover. Alas, they would do it again with both George Bushes, and Mitt Romney. Well, at least they haven't nominated another conservative businessman with no political experience whatsoever, and who was once a registered Democrat, but is actually a womanizer whose stances are all over the map. Wait a minute... Okay, unlike Donald Trump, Wendell Willkie was sane, and loved his country more than he loved himself.

And yet, someone determined that if Roosevelt's percentage was dropped by a little more than 3 percent in a few key States, he still would have won the popular vote, but lost the Electoral Vote by the slimmest of margins. He essentially won because he won what were then the 16 most populous Counties in America, in the biggest of cities, including all 5 Boroughs of New York.

This split convinced liberals that they were "the real America"; but also convinced conservatives that the liberals only won because they got the votes of immigrants, Catholics, Jews, black people -- people who, in their minds, weren't wholly American; and, thus, they could also claim to be "the party of the real America."

In all 4 of his runs for President, this was the only time FDR was nervous. At 7:00, sequestered at Springwood, his home in Hyde Park, Dutchess County, in New York's Hudson Valley, he told his chief of staff, Harry Hopkins, he didn't want to see anybody until good news arrived. "Even the First Lady?" Hopkins asked. The President was adamant: "I said anybody." By 8:00, the good news began to come in, and he could relax.

To be completely honest, he had good reason to be worried. If it wasn't for the war raging in Europe and the threat of Adolf Hitler, FDR would not have run for a 3rd term. And, if he had, and had run only on his domestic record, the New Deal, which had eased the Great Depression tremendously but had still not produced prosperity after 7 1/2 years, he would have lost. And, had he retired after 2 terms, any other Democratic nominee, no matter what his experience, would not have had FDR's domestic or foreign record, and would have lost, even to an opponent as inexperienced as Willkie.

Top 5 Reasons You Can’t Blame Franklin Roosevelt for Running for a 3rd Term in 1940

5. He Was Allowed. There was no law to stop him. The Republicans put forward the 22nd Amendment, limiting Presidents to 2 terms, after he was dead, as a slap to his memory and to the Democratic Party in general.

Which party has it hurt more? It's stopped Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1960, leading to John F. Kennedy; Republican Ronald Reagan in 1988, leading to George H.W. Bush; Democrat Bill Clinton in 2000, leading to George W. Bush; George W. himself in 2008, leading to Barack Obama; and Obama in 2016, leading to Donald Trump. Of course, George W. wouldn't have won a 3rd term anyway, so, while it's stopped 3 Republicans and 2 Democrats, it's possibly shifted 2 elections to the Republicans (2000 and '16), and only 1 to the Democrats (1960).

4. He Loved the Job. He frequently said, "I love it!" Why should he give up a job he loved, presuming the human resources department (the voters) would let him keep it?

3. The Republican Field. Thanks to landslide losses in the Congressional elections of 1922, 1926, 1930, 1932, 1934 and 1936, they had no one who was a credible 33rd President of the United States.

2. The Democratic Field. Thanks to a landslide loss in the Congressional election of 1938, and FDR's mistrust of Vice President Jack Garner and Postmaster General Jim Farley, the Democrats didn't exactly have an obvious successor to FDR, either.

1. Adolf Hitler. He had to be stopped. And no one else, in either party, had the experience and the judgment to handle him.

We now know that Roosevelt was elected to a 4th term in 1944, despite the Republican whisper campaign -- correct, as it turned out -- that he was dying. Ironically, both Willkie and his running mate would die before the next term was out: Willkie of heart trouble on October 8, 1944, at age 52 (10 years younger than FDR); and Charles McNary, the Senate Minority Leader, from Oregon, of a brain tumor on February 25, 1944, at 69.

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November 5, 1940, like all modern American Election Days, was a Tuesday. The baseball season was over. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL had no games scheduled for the day. So I can't do a "Scores On This Historic Day" feature for the event.