President Trump and some supporters are teasing the idea of a third term, which would require repealing the 22nd Amendment. What’s more plausible — and practical, given Trump’s age — is that he’ll follow President Obama’s precedent of remaining active in politics rather than fading from the scene. 

Ever since President Washington declined to stand for a third term but instead returned to his farm, chief executives have made way for their successors. President John Quincy Adams had a cynical take on the tradition. “There is nothing more pathetic in life,” he said, “than a former president.”   

These days, such selflessness and self-awareness are rare. What President Lincoln described as the “presidential grub” bores deep into the brains of those who fill the Oval Office. President Obama, who stayed in Washington D.C. after his term, surrendered to the grub and remained active. 

Thursday, in an interview with MeidasTouch, President Biden was asked about his plans after leaving office. “I’ve been talking with a lot of Republicans,” he said, who “no longer hold office, like I will not, but still are deeply engaged.”

A former president, however, is not just another former officeholder. The only Republican peer Mr. Biden has, President George W. Bush, is silent on his successors. By likening himself to those who held lesser posts, it looks as if Mr. Biden will hew toward Mr. Obama’s new normal. 

The American people embraced the two-term tradition even before the 22nd Amendment codified it in 1952. Stating that “no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice,” it was a response to President Franklin Roosevelt’s four terms, a de facto president for life. 

Only President Grant had sought a third full term — a non-consecutive one — prior to FDR’s run in 1940. The fate of America’s greatest warrior presidents led to a slogan that year: “Washington Wouldn’t, Grant Couldn’t, Roosevelt Shouldn’t.” Might Trump? 

“I suspect I won’t be running again,” the president-elect told the AP on December 13, “unless you say, ‘He’s so good, we got to figure something else out.’” In June 2019, he had shared a meme on social media titled “TRUMP 4EVA,” featuring campaign signs through 2048. 

Last week, Trump’s former White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon, told the New York Young Republican Club that he sees wiggle room in the 22nd Amendment. “Since it doesn’t actually say ‘consecutive’” terms, he said, ‘I don’t know. Maybe we do it again in ‘28?” 

A Democrat of New York, Congressman Daniel Goldman, filed a resolution last month clarifying that the 22nd Amendment “applies to two terms in the aggregate.” The legislation to close the loophole Mr. Bannon imagines was referred to the House Judiciary Committee where it’s fated to expire with the current Congress.

Even without Mr. Goldman’s bill, a repeal of the 22nd Amendment would likely be required for Trump to run again, and the Constitution sets a high bar for that. Amendments require either a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress or two-thirds of state legislatures requesting a convention to do it. 

No matter how an amendment is proposed, three-quarters of state legislatures or state conventions must ratify a new amendment. Congress chooses which method to use and has imposed a seven-year time limit to get the necessary support; Trump would have only four years to get the alteration proposed and find 38 states to agree. 

Only one amendment, the 18th, has ever been repealed, a feat accomplished by passage of the 21st amendment. Many presidents since have grated at the limit but accepted that they face an insurmountable obstacle.

Presidential ambition has gnawed at Mr. Biden since his first run for the White House in 1988. He is 82 years old, as Mr. Trump will be at the end of his second term, and at that age, even the grub gets tired. A man that age can’t be as active as Mr. Obama, who was 47 when he acceded to the presidency in 2009. 

President-elect Trump is already just the fourth president to win a third major party nomination. Rather than engaging in a quixotic effort to amend the Constitution and follow FDR to a fourth, expect him to forgo the attempt and, like Mr. Obama, stay active in politics, pathetic or not, forgoing a return to the farm — or golf course.