Eighty years ago, on November 7, 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was re-elected to an unprecedented third term in office, and The Weekly’s editorial on the front page of that issue commented on the significance of the result.
The editorial was optimistic on what the third term meant for American democracy, and it noted the result “indicates that American traditions are not rigid, but that when necessity arises they can and do adapt themselves to the exigencies of changing times.”
This “healthy sign of our nation’s development,” the editorial added, showed that traditions are not principles, but rather only customs.