That’s fine for Presidents, but Congress has a 90% incumbency rate. Do you think 90% of Congresspeople do a good job?
The reason for that is gerrymandered districts, no? Term limits will just put another D or R in the place of an existing D or R. I’m not seeing how that will substantively change things.
That’s not even close to true. The 112th Congress (the last one) had 93/435 freshman Representatives and 13/100 freshman Senators. (And remember, the Senate is only 1/3 elected every two years.)
The 113th Congress (the current one) was less of an upset, with 12 new Senators and 67 new Representatives.
Based on a casual perusal of numbers in the last couple dozen Congresses, it looks like the House can swing anywhere from 10% to 25% turnover.
But that’s beside the point.
Whether I think a given Congressman is doing a good job is immaterial; he’s there to represent his district or state and those are the people who get to choose. We have a democratic process that makes it difficult - though certainly not impossible - to remove incumbents from office, as happens to a healthy chunk of Congress every two years. Even in districts heavily favored by one party, we have a primary process.
Term limits were primarily a response to the corrupt political machines of the 19th century. Machine politics still exists to an extent, (especially in some cities) but it’s not the force it once was. And political corruption is significantly less common (and much harder to get away with) than it once was.
What I’m getting at is that the problems term limits were supposed to solve are criminal and legal problems, not political ones. I like democracy and I want to have a free choice of whom to elect every time. I don’t think prior service in a given office should be a disqualifier.
Yeah, like that’s a problem for a guy who faked his birth announcement 50 years ago.
Touche.
And, possibly, because he was pretty good at the job.
Point taken. It’s a rare circumstance where Democrats could be called smart.
FDR didn’t create any kind of dynasty, or even come close to it. Truman barely managed to hang on to get elected to president, and that was largely due to residual goodwill from FDR. Having lame duck presidents is a bigger problem in my opinion.
The constitution came with term limits. 4 years for president, 2 for representatives, 6 for senators. Blame the electorate if they keep re-electing those guys.
I don’t like the lifetime term limit for SC justices though. It’s better than allowing them to stay after they die, but that’s about it.
I agree with that. Back when the Constitution was written nobody was expecting SC justices to stick around for decades and decades. A mandatory retirement age, or say a hard limit of 15 years or something, would be a good thing.
How about we elect a president for one term, either 6 or maybe 8 years, and allow no further terms as president. That way, once someone is on office, the temptation to curry favors in order to win a second term is removed. In addition, no more spending the last year of a first term on the campaign trail.
Liberals: You mean you want another term for Dubya?
Conservatives: You mean you want another term for Obummer?
I like the constitution the way its written. We’ve been busy eroding the Bill of Rights since 9-11, no sense making dictator for life a constitutional possibility. (Still could happen, but would be outside the current constitution.)
It was outside the constitution before the 22nd Amendment was ratified.
As much as I like FDR’s legacy, the thought of three, four or five terms of senile Reagan or malignant narcissist W is too much to bear. W at least made me appreciate that Nixon was an intelligent psychopath.
I’m hoping Obama will have a long post-presidency like Carter and Clinton.
I’ve heard good arguments for and against this proposal. The most striking argument for term limits are those you’ve cited, the approval rating versus re-election rates. The most compelling argument against term limits is that with term limits you end up with a more polarized and infighting representative body. Because of the high turnover they only have a certain amount of time to get an agenda done and they fight tooth and nail and never compromise to get their pet bills/policies done. They don’t build long-term relationships with the civil bureaucracy or other lawmakers, and they never mature as lawmakers by being able to monitor the laws they crafted over a longer period of time in office. See the 112th congress(the one which just ended) and how the Freshmen Tea Party representatives made it more difficult to get things done.
I’ve even considered constitutional amendments which require sunsets on every law passed, so we don’t have stupid things persist forever. But after seeing the result of multiple fights over the Bush Tax Cuts and other bills that had sunsets I have come to the decision that automatic expiry of laws just creates hostage situations for arguments over what should and shouldn’t be included at the renewal time.
Enjoy,
Steven
It’s already happened with someone on my Facebook.
My favorite comment to that status (which had one like) was: I said before the election, if he wins, he’ll be our last president. Anyone see a dictatorship coming?
:smack:
It was a good idea, to let FDR serve 3+ terms, wasn’t it?
Mark me down as another who would support the repeal of the amendment. I am a firm opponent of term limits. For those who worry about Obama running for a third term, I’ll note that the language of the amendment excluded its provisions from applying to the current president, and there is no reason a repeal couldn’t do the same.
Incumbency is different than turnover. Incumbency requires an incumbent to be running for his/her own seat. To get a real incumbency rate you have to remove all of the Members of Congress who died or retired or lost in a primary. You only count the current seat holders who went on to lose to the other party.
The House has been well over 80% every year since 1964, with most years well above 90%. 2000 and 2004 were 98% and 99% respectively.
I don’t like Presidents-For-Life in any country.
Repealing the 22nd Amendment would leave intact the part of the Constitution that makes the term four years, so the president would still only be the President-For-Four-Years.