[Jonathan Tremblay is a historian and Breaking News Editor for the History News Network.]

Last week, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin were reminiscing about their long careers at the head of their respective countries and, as a joke, referring to the medical conference they were organizing, joked that they would rule until the age of one hundred twenty.  That same week, Putin tentatively began campaigning for a third term as Russian head of state, comparing himself to American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who held his position from 1933 to 1945.

Berlusconi himself has been showered with allegations of bribery, corruption and a plethora of antidemocratic schemes to attain and preserve power, but Vladimir Putin remains the object of my attention by blindly reaching out into history and grabbing the first example he found that could possibly justify and render innocuous his pursuit of unending power.  At the very base, Mr. Putin states that President Roosevelt sought a third term in 1940, something that was not forbidden at the time by the U.S. Constitution and that his own search for a third term is not explicitly illegal in the Russian constitution.

Yes, that’s it.  Mr. Putin brings up a parallel between himself and one of the most well-known heads of state in the last century and seemingly thinks that context is unimportant.  Vladimir Putin has held power as president or prime minister for over a decade now in a country that is relatively stable, prosperous and at peace.  No other democratically elected Russian head of state (that distinction is important since democracy only reached Moscow in 1991) would dare try for a third term to avoid more immediate parallels with the dictators of the Soviet Union or the tsars and tsarinas of the Russian Empire.  In any case, Mr. Putin feels that he has to justify himself and has done so by saying that someone, somewhere once did the same thing and that someone turned out to be pretty awesome so why not him.

A time of need

FDR was the Democratic nominee during the 1932 elections and rocketed to victory by championing state involvement in the national economy.  Whereas this had been an unpopular show of socialism in the past, the Great Depression had deeply overshadowed the benefits of a free market and the people screamed for relief.

His inauguration in March of 1933, weeks after the ascension of Adolf Hitler, put an end to seemingly inept Republican presidents faced with the collapse of the global economy.  With his New Deal policies enacting make-work programs, President Roosevelt was able to initiate social security, set a minimum wage for the first time and create 3.3 million jobs.  It thus comes as no great surprise that he was re-elected with a smashing majority in 1936 (He carried every state except Vermont and Maine).

This second mandate was plagued with returning economic hardships and aggressive regimes in Germany, Italy and Japan that threatened the isolationist policy of the United States.  Whereas the president first proclaimed that the Nazi problem was a European problem, he secretly cemented political, economic and commercial alliances with sympathetic countries such as France, the UK and China.  The American electorate would not have been happy about this involvement but in 1940, Paris quickly fell to Germany and President Roosevelt was convinced that he could be the only man able to protect American interests in a coming world war.  Roosevelt understood that President Ulysses S. Grant and his own uncle President Theodore Roosevelt were basically booed off the national stage for suggesting a third mandate and that George Washington himself declined a third set of four-years as antagonistic to the democratic process. Nonetheless, these were desperate times.

Running on a platform of non-involvement at all costs, Roosevelt won a third term and would spend very little of it NOT at war.  Once the date of December 7, 1941, had come and gone and Pearl Harbor had been attacked by Japan, Roosevelt did not wait a second and appealed to the people.  From an isolated or neutral position, Roosevelt wanted to move forward quickly and declared the Americans as the holders of an “Arsenal of Freedom.”  Three years of war later, the country was in electoral season again and Roosevelt had not finished bringing about the peace he promised.  Paraplegic and riddled with lung and heart disease, FDR won a fourth mandate as a man whom had seemingly been around forever, patching up problems and tending to the endless emergencies facing America.  President Roosevelt’s last months saw the end of the war in Europe and the accomplishment of his ultimate legacy:  the inauguration of the United Nations.

President Roosevelt was the great problem-solver of the last century.  Vladmir Putin is a former KGB agent that is now better known for restricting civil liberties and for oppressing and intimidating cultural minorities and former Soviet states.  “FDR did it” is not a justification for giving this man a third mandate.  In fact, considering Mr. Putin’s record of human rights abuses and contempt of democracy, FDR is the perfect justification to vote this man out and to keep him very far away from the Kremlin.