Luckily, no one’s discussing that.
Well, yes, of course, but the incumbency advantage is fucking enormous. Even W won a second term.
I’m not sure it really is all that enormous after eight years. It took 150 years for us to get a president who had the will and the popularity to do it.
I’d support an amendment providing that the wife, son, brother, nephew, niece, or any other relative, consanguineous or by marriage, of a president of the U.S. may not become the president of the U.S.
Again, F.D. Roosevelt seems to have done a pretty good job.
For what it’s worth, the only mjen disqualified by the 22nd Amendment have been:
[ul]
[li]Dwight D Eisenhower ® - 1961-69[/li][li]Richard M. Nixon ® - 1974-94[/li][li]Ronald W. Reagan ® - 1989-2006[/li][li]Willuiam J. Clinton (D) - 2001-fl.[/li][li]George W. Bush ® - 2009- fl.[/li][li]Barack H. Obama (D) -2017-fl.[/li][/ul]
You mention my major issues surrounding this discussion here, but I’d like to go into more depth. Elections, particularly presidential ones, are WAY more involved now than they’ve ever been. Regardless of what one thinks of Obama, running for reelection in 2012 was a huge distraction from his ability to perform his job as president. The same could be said of Bush in 2004 and on back. Sure, the president still does his job, but with his attention split, his energy invested elsewhere, a heavy travel schedule, I don’t think the country is best served by such a huge distraction. If not for the elections, might Obama have had more time to invest in working on the economic problems? Maybe Bush could have invested more energy in managing the wars.
I also think there’s issues with motivations between terms. It’s perceived, true or not, that a president will be less willing to make controversial or unpopular decisions in his first term, working toward currying favor to get reelected. Then after he’s reelected, he no longer has to answer to the electorate and can do pretty much whatever he wants, although he may damage his party’s future prospects. Even if there’s only a tiny bit of truth to this, I’d rather the president only be motivated by his desire to do a good job and not by his desire to be reelected, particularly since sometimes being a good leader means making unpopular decisions.
To that end, while not perfect, I like the system we have for governors here in Virginia. A governor may only serve one consecutive term. If the governor is doing a good job and the people want continuity, the governor will endorse a candidate and they’ll generally get elected if the current governor is well liked. And then that governor is free to run again in the election after if he wants, but that’s been uncommon. I’m not really sure how we might be able to hybridize those concepts to address the problems, but it’s an idea. I think it might be more successful on a congressional level. Maybe only allow senators and congressmen to serve a limited number of terms before being forced to pass it off. And if people really are that happy with their current representative or senator, they ought to be happy with who they endorse, but at least they have to put some thought into it.
Died or retired, yes.
Lost in a primary? That counts. The point of incumbency is that you can hold your office against ANYONE, not just your opponent in the general election. Heck, I’d argue that if you can’t scare your own party away from primarying you, the power of the position isn’t all that strong.
Anyway, according to this site: http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/reelect.php
House elections over the past 50 years have an 85-98% incumbency rate (and I’d put the average at around 93%).
The Senate ranges from 55-96% (and I’d put the average at around 80%).
They may not have expected it, but it isn’t like it is a recent thing. Of the first 25 justices on the Supreme Court, 10 have tenures greater than 20 years and 6 had tenures greater than 30.
William Cushing - 21
Bushrod Washington - 31
John Marshall - 34
William Johnson - 30
Gabriel Duvall - 24
Joseph Story - 34
Smith Thompson - 20
John McLean - 32
James More Wayne - 32
Rober Taney - 28
The recent 11 year between Stephen Breyer and John Roberts (8/3/94 - 9/29/05) was long, but the second longest is 11/18/1811 - 9/1/1823 between Joseph Story and Smith Thompson (with the caveat that there were only six justices then). But old judges and long serving judges is not a recent thing in American history.
As for the 22nd Amendment, I don’t expect repeal would ever pass but I’d support abolishing all the constitutional requirements for federal elected office. If America collectively wants to elect a 13-year-old girl in Germany to her third term as president then we should be able to do so. If the 4th District in Washington wants to elect a 22-year-old to the House, then fine by me.