The Third Term Diagnosis

A prescription from the Doctor of Logic and Coherence

Today I paid another visit to the Doctor of Logic and Coherence. The consultation was urgent after witnessing Donald Trump tell NBC News there are “methods” to seek a third term, insisting he was “not joking.”

“What's your diagnosis, Doctor?” I asked. “I'm concerned about my reaction to this.”

The Doctor adjusted his spectacles and spoke with clinical precision: “You don't suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome. You suffer from an unwillingness to participate in collective incoherence.”

George Washington's farewell address echoes through my mind: “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge... is itself a frightful despotism... [it] serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration.” What wisdom would Washington offer about a president openly contemplating how to remain in power beyond constitutional limits?

Here's the peculiar cognitive dissonance afflicting our discourse: When Trump says he's found “methods” to circumvent the Constitution's two-term limit—a foundational guardrail of our republic—his supporters execute a remarkable feat of intellectual contortion. They present themselves as serious people with serious concerns about governance while simultaneously dismissing explicit threats to constitutional order as mere entertainment.

The Doctor calls this “Schrödinger's Authoritarianism”—simultaneously a joke and a serious proposition until the moment of observation, when it collapses into whichever form is most expedient for evading accountability.

These self-proclaimed serious people—so concerned with border security, fiscal responsibility, and constitutional originalism—suddenly develop a selective blindness when their champion explicitly states he's “not joking” about finding ways to violate the 22nd Amendment. The same voices that lecture endlessly about the sacred nature of the Constitution become remarkably flexible when its constraints apply to their own side.

As James Madison warned in Federalist 51: “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” The 22nd Amendment exists precisely because we recognized the danger of concentrated, extended executive power. It wasn't partisan whimsy but hard-earned wisdom.

But even if we accept the “just trolling” diagnosis (which Trump explicitly rejected by saying “I'm not joking”), what kind of seriousness is compatible with treating constitutional guardrails as punchlines? What kind of mature governance treats the fundamental constraints on power as material for provocative entertainment?

Theodore Roosevelt, himself a powerful president who respected constitutional limits, observed: “The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole.”

The Doctor of Logic and Coherence has a simple question: How does one maintain the self-image of being a serious person while treating foundational aspects of constitutional democracy as disposable whenever convenient? What coherent definition of “seriousness” allows for such profound contradiction?

This isn't about partisan disagreement over tax rates or regulatory approaches. This is about the basic mechanism that prevents power from becoming permanent. When Trump muses about Vance running and then “passing the role” to him—or hints at “other methods too”—he's not engaging in policy debate. He's suggesting the rules that constrain all presidents shouldn't apply to him.

The true farce isn't just Trump's statement—it's the pretense of seriousness maintained by those who defend it. You cannot simultaneously claim to revere the Constitution and shrug when a president openly contemplates circumventing it. You cannot position yourself as a defender of American institutions while laughing off threats to one of its most important safeguards.

The Doctor's prescription is straightforward: Demand coherence, not just from your opponents but especially from yourself. If you claim the mantle of seriousness, then demonstrate it through consistent application of principles regardless of who benefits.

The dangerous farce isn't that Trump makes these statements—it's that millions of Americans who consider themselves serious citizens have abandoned the very coherence that makes serious citizenship possible.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And no amount of pretended seriousness can make constitutional violations compatible with constitutional reverence.

The center must be held—not because it is easy, but because it is ours to hold.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." — Theodore Roosevelt