I woke up this morning thinking about term limits after watching a documentary about FDR. That got me wondering: how many U.S. presidents actually got elected twice? Figured I'd dig into it properly.
Starting the messy research
First I grabbed my laptop and typed "two term presidents" into Google. Saw Wikipedia’s list of presidents, but knew better than to trust just that. Pulled up the official White House history site as backup. Scrolled through each administration manually, clicking every name to check terms. Annoying how they mix consecutive/non-consecutive terms without clear labels!
Hit a snag with Grover Cleveland – turns out his two terms weren’t back-to-back. Wrote "22nd president?" in my notes, then "24th president?" below it. Felt like doing detective work when I confirmed they count his split terms as two separate presidencies but one guy serving twice.
Building the full list
Made a table in my notebook with three sections:
- The obvious ones like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln
- Modern guys I remember – Reagan, Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama
- Weird cases like Cleveland and FDR's four terms
Double-checked FDR against history sites because four elections seemed insane. Yep, dude really served until he died. Added an asterisk beside his name for "special case."
Quick numbers vs complete picture
Counted them up – got 13 presidents with two terms initially. But wait! Eisenhower’s second term almost broke my pen when I wrote it. Forgot he served two full terms after WWII. Revised total to 14. Then remembered Grant and Jackson – both definitely had two terms. Final count: 16 presidents total served two terms, but only 13 actually finished both consecutively.
Extra discoveries
While digging, tripped over cool side notes:
- FDR kept winning like nobody cared about term limits
- Cleveland winning, losing, then winning again must've been wild
- Coolidge and Truman inherited first terms then got elected once
- Post-22nd Amendment (1951), nobody can pull a FDR anymore
Shoved all these into the "historic guide" part of my notes. Took extra care listing exact dates because some sources had conflicting year ranges – looking at you, random history blogs!
Ended up rewriting the list three times before feeling confident. Crazy how many details emerge when you actually map it out instead of skimming! Saved the doc as "PresTermCount_Final_FINALv2" (we all know how that goes). Might tweet a trivia thread tomorrow. Cheers!
