Roosevelt’s presidency never slid into autocracy, however. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is that many of Roosevelt’s executive excesses triggered bipartisan resistance. The court-packing scheme was rejected by both parties, and although Roosevelt destroyed the unwritten rule limiting presidents to two terms in office, support for the old norm was so strong that in 1947, less than two years after his death, a bipartisan coalition in Congress passed the Twenty-Second Amendment, which enshrined it in the Constitution. The guardrails were tested during the Roosevelt era, but
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