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There's a great deal of overlap between my view of FDR and my view of Trump. More precisely, this kind of thing was taboo, between the 22nd Amendment being written (there was obviously sufficient recognition that Presidents needed reining in, post-FDR, to both introduce formal term limits and move the inauguration date forward) and Trump.
But when they decided that this sort of thing wasnt good, they didnt roll back that result, nor change the letter of the constitution to match the practice. So, on the plain meaning of what you said, no, we have been doing an interpretation thats this bad-faith the entire time.
There are ways to address this, by setting up a construct of what you mean by "the constitution" where it is true (like, that the New Deal counts as changing the constitution even if it didnt really do that but come on, you know what I mean). I think its reasonable to do this, and to think its relevant to our current situation. But its important to remember that what youre talking about there is a very different kind of thing than people usually believe "the constitution" is (even while they also in practice do the same thing), and not to be too surprised if they dont see it the way you do.
In the case of term limits, they did (just not very well). Again, I'm drawing a distinction between the institutional tendency of the executive branch to try to expand its power and cults of personality leading to self-styled tacit "benevolent dictators," like FDR and Trump. ("self-styled" and "tacit" isn't the most cohesive description, but it's a sample size of two and you know what I mean)
Yes, but not the commerce clause. That bad faith interpretation has been used the entire time, with the approval of basically every politico and judge, because it was more important for them to be able to unconvincingly claim it didnt change than to fix that, and at this point, "We have walked this path for too long, and everything else has faded away. We have to continue in wicked deeds [...] or we would have to deny ourselves.".
I'm not saying it's not a problem, I'm saying it's a different problem. 1) Congress and POTUS trying to take more power for themselves is an institutional problem, while a third term as POTUS would be more of an institutional problem 2) SCOTUS isn't final because it's infallible, it's infallible because it's final - Wickard was a terrible decision, but following Wickard isn't "bad faith," and few amendments were ratified to nullify a SCOTUS decision (the post-Reconstruction examples are 16th and 26th?)
It is bad faith at least by the SCOTUS judges that continued to follow it. Other politicians share responsibility because they appoint those judges, and disagreeing with Wickard would take you out of the running.
And the amendment Im talking about it is not to reverse it, but to bring the text in line with current practice, for example by saying everything not forbidden is allowed instead of having enumerated powers. I dont think any amendments were made for reasons like that, because as per above, youre "in too deep" very quickly.
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