Well, I won’t disagree, not because I have a fundamental issue with Wilson, so much as because I happen to like Teddy.
There were absolutely not 34 presidents with the opportunity to seek a third term. Harry Truman was only the eleventh president to make it to the expiration of his second term (counting 2+ year partial terms as whole ones).
Term limits are a fake solution.
More frequent elections, as in annual, might actually be useful if you want to hold legislators accountable. So of course the legislators push term limits instead, to guide the public into something useless and moderately counter-productive.
I was going to make the same point as Lord Feldon: there were only 11 presidents prior to the 22nd Amendment who were in a position to think about a third run: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Grant, Cleveland, TR, Wilson, FDR, and Truman.
And of those 11, five explored/mused/attempted to get a third term: Grant (sought a third non-consecutive nimination); TR (ran for a third term); Wilson (speculated that if the Democrats were deadlocked at the 1920 convention they would turn to him); FDR (four terms); Truman (allowed his name to go forward in the 1952 New Hampshire primary).
Now, Wilson’s speculations might be just the sign of how badly his stroke affected his judgment (see the Wilson wiki article for details), but the point is that a sitting President was thinking about a third term. He didn’t recoil and say “Impossible! Sacred precedent set by Washington!”).
Same with Truman - he didn’t campaign hard, and his friends nominated him. But that strikes me as trial balloon with plausible deniability: if Harry Truman was opposed to a third term, I’m pretty sure he (and Bess!) would have made that clear to his friends.
So of the 11 who were in a position to seek a third term, 5 (just under half) at least turned their minds to it.
Ah, see, the point being made here is not the initial point being made, which I apprehended to be that “several” presidents attempted to become third term presidents. To me, “several” means more than three. And frankly, supposed speculation by Wilson is, in my opinion, just that, and not very credible as an attempt to become president.
Now, if the point originally being made was that there was nothing “sacred” about two terms, then I agree with that, though I will point out that the concept DID seem to last for at least the period through Lincoln. But my count of presidents has to do with the fact that the idea originally postulated was that presidents as a group simply don’t make it past a certain number of years, and taken from the moment they became president, all 34 had the opportunity to become a president for more than two terms. I suppose I should have been more clear on that.
33, not 34. Truman was the 33rd and last President who theoretically could have tried for three terms.
But, fair points.
In the 19th century it seems the tradition was set for ONE term. Between Van Buren’s loss to Harrison the elder and Cleveland’s defeat by Harrison the younger, only two Presidents stood for reelection, one in extraordinary circumstances.
So we seem to have determined that term limits cause politicians to stay in the system and to leave the system. Glad we were able to resolve that issue. Minus any further knowledge than what’s contained in these two posts, I’d have to opine that, on average, if people can argue that something is bad in completely opposite and conflicting ways, then probably neither is true and, on the whole, the average is the average. Some stay in, some leave, probably about the same as without term limits.
But I feel like it should also be noted that, for example, you can write a term limits amendment which says, “And you may not move to another job in government afterwards.” Or, which says, “And you may not accept gifts from lobbyists, nor take a job in lobbying after serving.” If you are worried about a particular outcome, you can a guard into the deal.
But certainly, it is silly to argue that a person will be mostly inexperienced if they can only work as a politician for 8-12 years. If you aren’t reasonably experienced after one year, you’re certainly doing something wrong. The grand majority of time that you are serving, you will be well-seasoned. And if all you have done for 30 years is legislate, it’s probably reasonable to believe that you might not have a good view, any more, of what life is like in the greater world - which is, exactly, the sort of knowledge that you need to legislate well.
How about this:
No hard limits, but an incumbent who runs for re-election has his vote total reduced by 5%. If his opponent gets 200,000 votes, the incumbent would need 210,500+ votes to win. A new candidate from the incumbent’s party would have his vote reduced by 1.5%. (Instead of a hard 5% reduction for incumbents, a sliding scale — 2%, 4%, 5%, 6%, 7%, 8% — can be applied for incumbents who’ve served for at least 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24 years.)
Yes, I know this proposal has no chance for passage. And will be attacked in this thread for reasons both valid and invalid.
I’m not sure what purpose that particular strategy would serve? For as much as I like to fight the idea that it’s the norm for politicians are bought and sold, or that money buys elections, I feel like your suggestion would be an active encouragement to people to spend their legislative power on rustling up money for their political future, or gerrymandering everything to hell.
As opposed to all the other active encouragements to do those things that exist now?
My state has legislative term limits. Several state legislatures do. They do in fact “spend their legislative power on rustling up money for their political future, or gerrymandering everything to hell.” And they might do that without term limits.
So, your argument is that if the effect of term limits is a wash, or even slightly negative, we should institute them where we don’t have them? And keep them where we have them? That’s an odd way to run things.
I think more the point was that there were things we cold do in addition to term limits that could make them more of a positive.
If they are currently a wash, then it should not require all that much effort to improve them.
Now, personally, I feel that being a politician should be a sacrifice. You don’t necessarily get all the rights you would get as a civilian. You shouldn’t get a great pay (I would base it on the mean or the median average of your constituency, whichever is lower), you should have no perks that aren’t required to do your job, and there should be a non-compete clause that does not allow you to work with any of the businesses that would have been impacted by your decisions for at least 4 years, if not longer, during which time, you can keep your pay as a politician. Everything donated to you worth more than $5 should be declared to the ethics board, and most things should not be accepted. Everything you own when you are elected should be liquidated up to the point of bankruptcy protections with the money from the proceeds invested in treasury bonds that can only be sold after you are out of office.
If the reply here is, “Well, I wouldn’t accept those terms!” Then good. You should not want to be a politician. You should not seek power for the sake of power, and any other reason for seeking power is worse.
Only those who don’t care about personal gain, and are willing to sacrifice their personal ambition to serve others are qualified to be political leaders IMHO.
My argument was that the posts I was responding to seemed to be of poor quality. I don’t know enough about the topic to comment beyond pointing out obvious issues with what others have said.
Myself I favor the term limits on the Chief Executive (Prez, Gov), due to it being a single-person office in charge of an entire Branch, and the need to avoid concentration of power on one person and the circle around that one person, especially in a strong-CEO “unitary executive” system like the USA.
In the collective bodies like the legislatures (National and State) OTOH I am not in favor of absolute or “tight” term limits to force people out after 12 yrs or less of service or ban them from running again or from doing business with the government for long time periods, due to power being more distributed. If “the people” actually *want *greater turnover then, damnit, people, vote the bastards out; parties, come up with good primary and opposition challengers; legislatures, do away with safe-seat gerrymandering.
But why do supposedly “the people” want the greater turnover? and how much? I’d like to know if someone has a number on exactly how much churn is supposed to be “right” – 20% per election? 40%? I live in a non-limited jurisdiction but for instance in the House the last three elections the distribution has gone from 14-37 to 28-23 to 16-34-1 and by now something like half the people who were there in November 2008 are not going to be there next Monday, no need to ban them from running.
Now, however, let’s bear in mind nothing in the respective constitutions would prevent internal legislative governeance reform to establish a limit on what power individual members may accumulate, like how long you can be Majority/Minority Leader or Speaker or Committee Chair without taking a break so that you have to it out a term and re-earn the post. And the parties can internally require more contested primaries. Maybe a similar requirement for the holding of your seat itself could be passable, but no absolute whole-life limit.
Oops, forgot Cleveland was only one person. :smack:
If you really want to stop corruption and cronyism you’ll need something a bit more radical. Like sortition. Darn! I got governor duty this month.
Which is why between every person in the running in last year’s election, there wasn’t a single person with a higher approval rating than the sitting president. I don’t know what I’d call that; “working” ain’t it.
When I read this, I picture someone who thinks the way sausages are made ought to be pretty. Politics is a dirty, complex business, and your proposal seems to ensure that you would not get well-qualified, well-suited individuals. You would simply filter out anyone with an MBA or a law degree, and have left over people who are either wildly incapable or have ulterior motives.
It’s an ideal, I admit, one that I would be extremely surprised to see ever get used. What I laid out would definitely be at the end of the road of political reform. But the important part is that people should not be seeking power for personal motives.
But, as far as talent goes, there are plenty of highly talented individuals with all sorts of learning and degrees that do not take the job that pays best, but the job they feel is most important for them to take. I think you would get some very talented people to run, even if the perks are not as nice as they are now.
For instance, my local city council has some brilliant people, one with a phd, and the rest with either law degrees or MBA’s, and we pay them about 16k a year for not a small amount of work, and they campaign pretty hard to get that low paying job.
Your proposal makes no sense. You seem intent on making the conditions of the job so bad that the only people who would accept them are those individuals who are so desperate for power they would sacrifice anything for it.
I’d go the opposite route. I’d increase the salaries of elected officials tenfold and make it tax-free. I’d give them company cars, an open bar, and movie stars giving them foot rubs. I’d make being an elected official the best job anyone could ever dream of having.
I’d be flooded with applicants. I could set my standards as high as I wanted and hire only the most qualified person for the job. And then as they settled in on the first day, I’d remind “Don’t forget. There’s a performance evaluation in two years. Do a great job or I’ll fire you and replace you with the next guy on the list.”
The current set up attracts those attracted to both wealth and power, so I consider it an improvement.
Consider, someone in a community who wishes to improve the economy, or lower crime, or whatever it is about their community that they wish to improve. They have to want it.
So, desperation may be a stronger word than I would use, but I would like to see the field limited to those who are more interested in what they can do to their community with their power, than what they can do for themselves.
Here’s the thing, do elected officials actually need skills? They need to make decisions that are brought to them by the bureaucrats working under them, but for that, they need only critical thinking skills, not actual technical knowledge. The bureaucrats working under them should point out the probably effects of the stuff that the politician is considering, and the politician can make a decision based on what effects are desirable to their constituency.
We currently do have “highly qualified” people running for office. Pretty much all the congresscritters have law or mba degrees. Many of them are actually pretty damn smart. And they are all under the threat of “being fired” should they not do a good job, and yet they never do.
Basically, your proposal seeks to change nothing, but only to give even greater rewards to those who already have considerable wealth and power.
Would you, in your proposal, do anything to curb corruption? Or would that just be another perk that you are offering?