Only 26 percent of Americans would vote for President Obama if he were eligible for a third term, the Monmouth University Institute Poll announces. Some 68 percent say they would vote for somebody else. Only 53 percent of Democrats would vote for him and only 23 percent of independents and (who are these people?) 5 percent of Republicans. “I think if I ran, I could win,” Obama said on his trip to Ethiopia. Not so, say the respondents in the Monmouth poll.

However, conservatives would be unwise to take this as a massive repudiation of the president and his policies. The same poll gives Obama 45 percent job approval, his average level in current polling. I think what we are seeing here is that, once again, we are a Twenty-second Amendment nation. That’s the constitutional amendment, ratified in 1951, which limits presidents to two terms in office (or two terms and just short of half of another for those who succeed to the office on the death or resignation of the incumbent).