President Barack Obama announced on September 18^th that he will be running for another term as president in 2016. During a 2 hour long speech, President Obama declared “I am officially in the race, not as a Democrat, but as an Independent. For eight years, I have been constrained and defined by my party. I have not been able to do the things I wanted to do, the things I promised to do, because of the party process.” He then proceeded to criticize other candidates, including Republican presidential aspirant and media mogul Donald Trump, calling him “outspoken yet shortsighted.”

The news of a 2016 Obama campaign attracted mixed reactions. Some supporters have equated Obama’s decision to leave the Democratic Party to George Washington’s stance against party politics. Others, including several Republican candidates, are more critical of Obama’s decision to run for office again. Texas Senator Ted Cruz called the Obama campaign a “desperate power grab.”

Obama is perhaps the most surprising and most controversial of all 2016 candidates. His decision to run as an independent candidate leaves him accountable to nobody, letting him be outspoken when speaking to and about other candidates. The fact that the president is running as an independent means that he will not have to deal with party primaries, allowing him to focus all of his energy on the election in 2016.

The last president to have served more than two terms as president of the United States was Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR for short), who was president from 1933 to 1945. In fact, FDR was the only president in United States history to have served more than two terms. He was in office for three full terms, and died partway through his fourth. If Obama wins, he will be both the second president to have served over two terms and the president with the second-most time in office.