By late 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt's plans regarding a possible third term in 1940 affected national politics. A Republican leader told H. V. Kaltenborn in September 1939, for example, that Congressional distrust of the president was a cause of the controversy over revising the Neutrality Acts of 1930s. The politician, who supported selling weapons to Britain and France, claimed that Roosevelt could "regain the complete confidence of Congress and the country" by announcing that he would not run for a third term. An unnamed Roosevelt advisor said, however, that doing so would reduce the president's influence on Congress and the Democratic party. Roosevelt would not announce his intentions until spring 1940, the advisor said.
