The Walt Blackman Show

A president should leave on time, even when loved

• Walt • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Every president before and after Washington knew it.

Because once you let power stretch beyond its limits, it never snaps back. Just this once’ — that’s how republics unravel. No man, no party, no movement is bigger than the Constitution. Two terms. No exceptions.




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SPEAKER_01:

This is the Walt Blackman Show, where truth doesn't whisper. It lands like thunder, hosted by Walt Blackman, a decorated combat veteran, a principled legislator, and a steadfast defender of the Constitution. Walt served with distinction in Iraq, led soldiers in battle, then entered public service to defend the republic he once fought to preserve. This show isn't about politics as usual. It's about fidelity to the rule of law, the design of our founding framework, and the courage to call out departures from it. Welcome to the Walt Blackman Show.

SPEAKER_02:

During my deployment in Iraq, my vehicle was hit hard by an IED, an improvised explosive device. It was violent, suddenly, and it could have ended much worse. I'm thankful, deeply thankful, that my crew walked away. That blast left me with a traumatic brain injury or TBI, a wound I still carry today. But we survived, and that matters. TBIS don't always leave visible scars. They can come from explosions, collisions, or shrapnel, and they disrupt how the brain works, sometimes permanently. Memory lapses, mood swings, headaches, sleepless nights, these are now part of my everyday life. Even a mild TBI can change your world, and after combat, it often does. This injury is a disability I sustained while defending our country, our constitution, and you. I take that seriously. That's why I choose to be honest about it. You deserve the truth, and I owe it to you. I use AI to help produce this podcast, not to replace my voice, but to clarify it, to bring structure to thoughts that sometimes get tangled, to help me keep telling this story with integrity. This podcast is part of my recovery. It's how I adapt, how I continue to serve. It's the voice of a soldier, a citizen, a constitutional sentinel, still standing, still speaking. Thank you for listening, and thank you for letting me be real. When we speak of constitutional principles, we aren't merely quoting text or venerating old documents. We're wrestling with how human beings, flawed, ambitious, fearful, respond to temptation. The temptation to hold on when everything says to let go. The temptation to argue just this once will instance for crisis, for unity, for necessity, the rule doesn't apply. But the moment you allow an exception, you begin to cleave at the foundation. So I want to pose today a question that sounds sterile in political debate, but is vital in constitutional life. Can a president serve a third term? If the question were only about law, we'd answer it quickly. But it is not only about the law, it is about character, guardrails, democracy, and legacy. It is about whether we believe power must be bound, even when it seems good. On its face, the answer is simple. Under the 22nd Amendment, no. Lawrence versus desire, amendment versus ambition. The 22nd says you cannot be elected more than twice. But when ambition meets law, the waters churn. Because human actors bring creativity, and where there is creativity, there is a search for shadows, lawyers, strategists, political operatives. They know how to trace lines, probe gaps, test edges. They sketch shadows in words the founders believe to be bright lines. Their art is in the loophole, the waiver, the exception. But before we chase shadows, let's ground ourselves in precedent, in structure, and in the moral question. Why did the founders and later Republic defenders care so deeply about limits? Because every long power life is a slow death for republics. Consider a man in your life you admire. Think of someone in your community. If he held a position for decades, his personality, preferences, and alliances would warp the institution. The institution would become his rather than ours. The same is true of a president. Over too many turns, the person and the office fuse, and the office bends to serve the person. The Constitution is strongest when it resists that fusion. So when I argue against a third term, I do so with a body that daily argues its limitations. I do so not as a theorist, but as someone whose own will was tested. That gives me humility in conversation, not arrogance, because I understand what it means to push beyond a limit and pay the price. Limits aren't mere constraints. They are invitations to creativity within boundaries. They force discipline, they preserve integrity, they make men and institutions live by their armor, not by their strength. When you argue that a president, beloved, proven, or righteous should stay longer, ask at what cost? What does power demand in return? What will we lose in the bargain? That's the personal weight I bring. And I don't claim perfection, I claim awareness. That's why this discussion is not theoretical. It's primal. When we talk about American democracy, we often focus on rights, the freedom to speak, to worship, to vote. But just as essential as those freedoms are, the limits we place on power. The architecture of our republic isn't just built on empowerment, it's built on restraint. And no example illustrates this better than the 22nd Amendment. So I think the discussion should turn to the hidden meaning of constitutional restraint. The 22nd Amendment doesn't stand alone. It's not an isolated sentence in the legal code. It's a pillar built into the larger cathedral of the Constitution. When you look at the Framers' design, you realize they didn't just draft rules for who can hold power. They drafted rituals for how power must be surrendered. That is the difference between a constitution and a contract. A contract governs behavior. A constitution governs ambition. Now, the founders didn't imagine a presidency without guardrails because they understood human nature. They had read their history and frankly, they were their history. They had just broken from a monarchy. Many of them, particularly Jefferson, Madison, and Adams, carried fresh memories of how power, once centralized, breeds loyalty not to law, but to the man who wields it. The framers weren't cynics. They were realists. They knew that power doesn't just attract the ambitious, you know, it transforms them. James Madison, in Federalist Number 51, gave the core logic for every limit in our constitutional system. If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. That line isn't poetry, it's instruction. The Constitution was built not for angels, but for fallible human beings whose virtue cannot be presumed. It was built so that even good people would have to operate within structure because unbounded virtue can corrupt as thoroughly as naked greed. And that's where the 22nd Amendment fits into the architecture. It's not about any one man or moment, it's about structural humility, the idea that even a democracy must protect itself from its own affection for power. Let's talk about that architecture for a second. Article 1 gives Congress its powers, but divides it in two: a house responsive to the people's passion and a Senate designed to cool it. Article II vests executive power in a single president, but limits his tenure and subjects him to impeachment. Article III grants the judiciary life tenure not to elevate judges above the people, but to anchor them against transient winds of politics. Even the election calendar, staggered congressional terms, midterm elections, fixed presidential terms, is a temporal form of checks and balances. The framers deliberately built tension into the system. They didn't want harmony. Harmony is for choirs. Republics survive on dissonance. And that's where the 22nd Amendment enters as a modern reinforcement, a structural bracket attached to Article II. It's the institutional memory of Washington's restraint. Washington's refusal of a third term wasn't an act of fatigue. It was a moral gesture, a deliberate teaching moment for the Republic. He could have easily justified staying. The nation was fragile, foreign threats loomed, domestic factions were rising. Every argument that later presidents would use, from Roosevelt to Reagan to modern figures, applied to Washington as well. But Washington understood that power's ultimate virtue lies in the ability to relinquish it. He once said, example, whether it be good or bad, has a powerful influence. His example set the moral tone of the early republic. When Washington walked away, he wasn't resigning. He was demonstrating. He was saying, this republic must not depend on me. It must depend on the Constitution. That right there was the first significant act of constitutional restraint, a moment when power bowed to principle voluntarily. For 140 years, every president honored that precedent. Jefferson called it the wise and honorable course. Jackson was urged to stay. He refused. Grant flirted with the idea and was quickly rebuked by his party. Even Theodore Roosevelt, with all his bravado and appetite for action, accepted that third-term talk smelled of monarchy. And then came Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Now, FDR's four elections were born of extraordinary times. The Great Depression, Global War, a centuries crisis rolled into one. His leadership, charisma, and effectiveness are undeniable. But when he won that third and fourth term, the invisible line that separated Republic from Empire began to blur. His decision was constitutional, but it was constitutionally unnerving, because once one man can claim continuity by necessity, every successor will claim the same. Congress and the states responded not in anger but in prudence. The 22nd Amendment was their way of saying, never again will the Republic depend on one man's restraint. From now on, restraint will be written into law. It's important to note something subtle here. The 22nd Amendment didn't just copy Washington's precedent, it improved it. Washington's model was moral, the 22nd made it mechanical, but even within that mechanical design, the framers of the amendment showed remarkable foresight. They understood that history is messy. Presidents die, resign, or are incapacitated. So they added a succession clause. If someone assumes the presidency for more than two years of another's term, they can only be elected once more. That detail ensures that a vice president who inherits the office can't stretch a partial term into a near-lifetime appointment. It's a measured balance between continuity and caution, flexible enough to handle crisis, firm enough to prevent abuse. That's what I mean when I say the amendment isn't blunt. It's calibrated, it's a precision instrument in the machinery of the Constitution. It solves a specific problem, the temptation to stay too long. And that brings us to the heart of constitutional restraint itself. And constitutional restraint is the art of balancing ambition with architecture. The founders didn't suppress ambition, they redirected it. They wanted ambition to check ambition, as Madison put it. They wanted a system in which a president's drive would meet Congress's pride, and Congress's pride would meet the court's judgment. No single will was allowed to dominate. The 22nd Amendment is an extension of that same principle. It doesn't deny ambition. It disciplines it. It says, you may serve but not forever. You may lead but not own. You may shape history, but not become it. Now, this is where things get interesting because restraint as a virtue is unpopular in politics. It doesn't win applause. It doesn't trend on social media. You'll never see a headline that reads, president heroically decides not to overreach. No one gets statues for letting go. But that's precisely why restraint is sacred. It's the quiet virtue that sustains the loud ones. Let me offer an example. In Rome, the Republic survived almost 500 years, not because it was the strongest, but because it understood balance, at least for a time. They had a dictatorial system, but it was time limited, six months, emergency use only. Cincinnatus, when called to defend Rome, took dictatorial powers, won the war, and then, this is key, returned home to his farm. Washington modeled himself after that example. And when FDR broke the two-term precedent, many contemporaries invoked the Roman analogy. They saw the risk of an American Caesarism born not from tyranny, but from adoration. The founders feared that more than any enemy abroad, not the sword, but the smile of a popular leader who stays too long. And that brings us to the most dangerous temptation of all, the cult of personality. When a constitution starts bending for a person, it stops protecting a people. If laws are interpreted by loyalty rather than by text, you no longer have a republic, you have a court of favorites. The framers didn't design the presidency to accommodate personality, they designed it to transcend it. The office must remain larger than the man who holds it. Now that's where we stumble today, because our modern politics, left and right, worships personality. We build brands, not principles. We defend people, not processes. And both parties are guilty. Democrats cheered executive orders when their man held the pen and condemned them the moment the pen changed hands. Republicans did the same. Everyone wants unlimited power so long as it's their guy using it. But the Constitution doesn't play that game. The 22nd Amendment doesn't care about your partisan preferences. It's the equal opportunity buzzkill of American politics. It says, in essence, I don't care if you wear a red tie or a blue tie. You get two shots, then it's someone else's turn. And that's healthy because rotation is renewal. Power must pass or it will rot. Institutions must refresh or they will ossify. The founders built the Constitution like a living clock, each branch, each mechanism ticking in harmony with the others. The 22nd Amendment added a spring to that clock, ensuring that time, not personality, moves the gears of governance. If you remove that spring, the gears jam. The machine starts serving the clockmaker instead of keeping time. Now there's a modern argument that says term limits are undemocratic. If people love a leader, they say, why not let them keep him? It sounds democratic, but it's actually the opposite. Pure democracy is dangerous precisely because it lacks restraint. It's the tyranny of the majority, or worse, the tyranny of emotional impulse. Constitutional republics exist to filter that impulse through structure. The 22nd Amendment is not anti-democratic, it's anti-idolatry. It's the Constitution's way of saying, yes, you may love your leader, but you may not keep him forever. And thank God for that, because every generation falls in love with someone a Washington, a Lincoln, a Reagan, an Obama, a Trump, and every generation must be told, you may admire them, but the Republic is not theirs. That's what keeps us freed. When you strip away the jargon in history, constitutional restraint is really about humility. It's about recognizing that no individual, not even the virtuous, can be trusted with indefinite power. The office of the presidency was designed to be a custodianship, not a coronation. The 22nd Amendment ensures that the keys get handed back. And let me say something to both sides of the aisle here. And yes, I say it with love and a little humor. Republicans, stop fantasizing about your favorite president making a comeback tour. This isn't professional wrestling. Democrats, stop pretending your former presidents are philosopher kings who must return to save democracy. Neither of you get to have a monarch. That's the point. We don't do sequels in this system. In the end, structure must matter more than personality. Because when the Constitution starts bending around a person, it loses its spine. The moment we decide that exceptions are acceptable just this once, we begin to dissolve the republic molecule by molecule. And if you think I'm exaggerating, look around the world. Nations crumble not when dictators seize power, but when citizens surrender it willingly for just one more term. The Constitution isn't fragile because it limits power. It's strong because it limits power. The 22nd Amendment is our institutional memory of that truth. It codifies not only Washington's restraint, but America's maturity, the recognition that greatness is measured not by how long one holds office, but by how gracefully one leaves it. And if we ever lose sight of that, if we ever let affection for a leader outweigh fidelity to the law, then the presidency will stop being a trust and start being a throne. And America was never meant to have a throne. You've heard me argue that constitutional restraint is essential, but restraint is not easy. And in moments of crisis, what feels necessary often demands bending the rules. So now we must walk the razor's edge. When is continuity justified? And in when is it the seed of decay? Let's begin with a thought experiment. Suppose we face an existential crisis, a global war, economic collapse, domestic chaos, pandemic, and social breakdown. The people cry out, we need the one we trust. A president with steady hands, proven competence, broad support, they say, don't make us change now. The argument is seductive. It sounds patriotic, it sounds urgent. Let us keep what works until the storm passes. But here's the danger crisis is the favorite argument of power. Every would-be autocrat invokes it. The first time someone bends the rules for crisis, the next time they will bend them for ambition. The window of just this once swings wide when the precedent is planted. We see analogous patterns in history. In France, successive emergencies and revolutions eroded term limits until figural strongmen consolidated control. In Latin America, constitutional amendments passed under emergency pretenses became permanent regimes. In post-colonial states, emergency clauses meant to last weeks became tools of lifetime rule. Each time the rhetoric of necessity paved the road to permanence. The United States is not immune to that logic. When Roosevelt ran for a third term during the Great Depression and World War II, many supported it. The emotional case was robust. But what FDR did legally, later generations treated as a warning. That is the tension, good people, real crises, sincere appeals for stability versus the slow constitutional decay that follows. So how do we distinguish justified continuity from creeping tyranny? I propose three axes of judgment. This principle of restraint isn't just philosophical, it's deeply practical. In any healthy constitutional system, limitations on power must be intentional, structured, and time-bound. They aren't imposed randomly, they're designed with foresight and precision. That's where the architecture of constitutional mechanisms comes into focus, temporal limitation prefaced by plan, legislative, and judicial concurrence, and a clear sunset or return path. Again, let me break each of these down. But it's not enough to say power should end. You have to design how it ends. And more importantly, you must ensure that the end is real, not just rhetorical. That's where one of the most essential guardrails comes in, temporal limitation prefaced by plan. If someone argues for staying longer, it must come with a fixed temporal boundary. I will stay only until X condition is met, and that condition must be concrete, objective, and measurable, not open to reinterpretation. Yet even the most principled temporal restraint requires institutional anchoring. Intent alone is insufficient. Continuity cannot hinge on the self-justifying logic of executive necessity. In a constitutional order, legitimacy is not proclaimed. It is conferred. Which brings us to the second structural imperative: legislative and judicial concurrence. If continuity is claimed, it must not rest on executive fiat. Now let's anchor this in constitutional philosophy. James Madison warned us: if men were angels, no government would be necessary. That line from Federalist number 51 captures the tension we live in. We must build government that governs, but also that restrains itself. He counseled, giving each branch the means and motives to resist encroachment. Ambition, the drive in disparate actors, should counteract ambition in others. That is the architecture of resilience. T. In this spirit, what feels necessary is only sustainable if it respects the system's incentives. If you centralize too much power, you align incentives inside the presidency, not across branches. You convert constitutional opposition into an existential threat. The legislature hesitates, the courts fear, and the opposition concedes. That is how constitutional balance dies. So the question isn't: is a third term justified? It is, under what architecture could a third term be tolerated, if ever? And the answer must be only if it's short, sanctioned, conditional, reversible. The 22nd Amendment gives us a guardrail precisely because we can't trust the variable judgment of future actors. It refuses to negotiate with urgency. It says, no matter how urgent the crisis, the limit holds. That is a constitutional discipline, a built-in skepticism toward powers, please. If we ever let urgency override principle, we open the door to mission creep, to successor entrenchment, to an executive that accumulates not authority but inevitability. The moment you allow a president to say, I'm indispensable, you erase the difference between service and sovereignty. We must resist that narrative. We must instead reaffirm that constitutional systems are stronger than individual virtue. The man of character may lead brilliantly, but he must also leave gracefully. Let me offer a cautionary parallel. In many Latin American countries, term limits were removed in the name of continuity, of bringing stability after turbulence. But stability turned into stagnation, leadership turned into dynasty. The promise of just one more term became a doorway to perpetual incumbency. If we allow the fiction of necessity to override the fact of limit, we mimic that pattern. So in your mind's eye, imagine this. A president argues, we cannot change horses midstream. Give me a third term to finish the job Congress considers, the public debates. But nowhere is there a clear sunset clause. The re-entry may seem reasonable, but it hides the risk of permanence. Once that shoe is on, you cannot unwear it without looking foolish. Constitutional restraint demands we not even slip that shoe. So here is the public duty. If ever a third-term claim surfaces, demand explicit limitations, time, oversight, consent, reversibility. Do not accept vague promises. Do not allow power to expand by assumption. Demand that structural integrity, yet not rhetorical urgency, yeah, remain the standard. And in short, what feels necessary today can become dangerous tomorrow. Sustainability demands that we refuse exception except by explicit constitutional procedure. That is the difference between saving the Republic and replacing it. And so what do we do with all of this? We've walked through the founding fears, we've studied the structure, we've examined the text, we've even heard the whisper of ambition echo through our political halls from Roosevelt to now. And here's the bottom line: the 22nd Amendment isn't just a law, it's a warning label, a guardrail welded onto the presidency by a generation that saw what can happen when loyalty outlives liberty, when power stays too long and principle gets tired. And now, some will say, but what if the people want their president back? That's not democracy. That's emotional monarchy. Because liberty means telling even the leader you love, your time is up. It means believing that no one is irreplaceable, not even when they're popular, not even when the world's on fire. The Constitution wasn't built for convenience. It was built for conscience, for conflict, for containment, and yes, for cold, firm, deliberate limits. If we give those up because of fear or worse, because of fandom, then we don't deserve what the founders gave us. Now let me be real with you. I've been to countries where power doesn't step down. I've seen what it looks like when men stay in office, not because of votes, but because of control. And I'll tell you this: it doesn't take jack boots and tanks. Sometimes it just takes a loophole and enough applause. So here's your civic duty. Don't think tribally. Don't think short term. Don't think about the leader you love. Think about the next one and the one after that. Because if we let the 22nd amendment become optional even once, it will never be optional again. Let's keep the line firm, let's keep the republic honest, and let's remember the office is always bigger than the occupant. If today's episode challenged you or made you smirk at the absurdity of it all, don't let the dialogue end here. Subscribe to the Walt Blackman Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, or wherever your intellect wanders. Want to know how I went from Combat to the Capitol? Order my book from Iraq to the State House, a soldier's journey of leadership, service, and sacrifice. Available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or anywhere books still matter. Visit WaltBlackman.com for show archives, book links, and more ways to engage.

SPEAKER_00:

This program was produced with the assistance of AI as a communication aide, consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act, AWA. Walt Blackman lives with a service connected traumatic brain injury, and AI helps him deliver his message with clarity, consistency, and purpose.

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