Extend term limits?

While this is geared towards the US, it can be adapted to other countries without any real difficulty, so opinions from non-American tropers are more than welcome.

One of the problems with politicians these days is that they never really stop campaigning for re-election. When you're seat is up every few years, there's really no other choice. So here's my proposal: How about we extend term lengths for everyone? Maybe even make a few permanent (in the latter case, impeachment would obviously still be possible). For the president specifically, I was thinking a single ten year term.

As the Tea Partiers showed, newbies are quickly taken advantage of by corporate interests; giving representatives more time to shore up their power base and forge political connections would allow them to fight on a more even level.

So. What are the problems?

Well, for starters, it will make it a lot more difficult to remove a corrupt/incompetent politician.*

Second, it sounds like a temporary fix. If it's true that, whoever starts campaigning first has significantly increased his/her odds, politicians will just start campaigning even earlier, just to be ahead of the competition. 4 years becomes 5, 5 become 6, and eventually, we'll be back at square one.

I vote no. It just gets harder to remove a damaging politician. Impeachment is good but it's been used very rarely for a reason. As for the POTUS specifically I think that's too much. Eight years is close to ten but the difference is that he can get removed for idiocy a lot sooner. Granted most presidents serve two terms anyway but if he really screws up I'd prefer I have the option to remove him in 3 years rather than waiting another 9.

I don't think this would stop corporate interests from taking them over. In fact it would make them more likely to seek out alliances because they'd have a more powerful ally if they got someone on their side and they have a long term.

The issue, as I see it, is that politicians are too shy to commit to any real long term plans, because there's a need to get results before the next election. Short term plans are often too ineffective and too easily repealed. However, corporate control becomes a bigger issue if politicians last longer.

So it's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario: the longer terms are necessary to get things done right, but the current political culture means longer terms will translate to the wrong things getting done.

Actually, speaking as someone looking in from the outside (Australian) I think that your two year election cycle for your House of Reps is too short but that's only half of the equation.

Your campaign season is too long relative to your election cycle by a huge margin. Even in the relatively low-key midterms it seems to go one for about six months. I kind of like the Australian method where campaign advertising is limited to six weeks before the election.

Here's the deal, I would be ok with extending the time someone may serve in office on the condition that Senators were only allowed to do a set number of terms. "Senators for life" are pretty much the bane of our existence here in the States. For instance, if we said as a senator you could do two ten year term limits, that'd mean Feinstein would finally be out of the senate, which I'd be ecstatic about.

Six weeks doesn't seem to be long enough. It might work for local elections but people representing a large area need to spend time traveling to various regions to campaign and debate with their opponents so people know who they want to vote for.

I do and I don't like the idea of term limits. On the one hand it helps remove career politicians that generally become corrupt over time and it means it's harder to stagnate. On the other hand some people could have a lot more to offer by remaining in power and continuing their work but they could get removed before their ideas come to fruition. While I would like some term limits I think it should be four instead of two. That gives them a reasonable amount of time to get their work done without letting them stick around forever.

edited 29th Dec '12 3:13:58 PM by Kostya

Perhaps a certain amount of hours of advertising per Candidate, and only at certain approved times? And banning Private Political adverts?

And, of course, bringing Political Adverts into line with "normal" advertising Standards and Regulations...

edited 29th Dec '12 3:18:22 PM by Greenmantle

I was thinking more along the lines of a database that compiles information on various candidates (ranging from speeches and public addresses, bills they authored, their views on certain issues, etc.) that sorts them by the position they're running for. It would basically be a way of archiving all the news articles and stuff that pertain to them and would allow people to know when they're B Sing the public. Something like this could have been very useful this past election since Romney flipped his position so damn much.

As for your ideas I think setting limits on the number of hours is a good idea since it makes it harder for someone to just outspend their candidate and get their message out there more effectively. Setting limits on times doesn't seem like it would be useful. If you mean Citizen's United stuff by the private adverts then hell yes! That needs to be repealed.

edit: Well if you were truly curious about an advert you could go to the website I outlined and see how it lines up with reality.

edited 29th Dec '12 3:22:35 PM by Kostya

I think the former does horrendously more damage than the latter.

And the former prevents people who are in the latter from getting anything done. I mean shit, we have a president for 8 years tops, but we can have Senators for decades? That needs to change. I'd say 20 years is plenty of time to get things done as a Senator. It's how long you spend in the military before retirement, sounds adequate enough for a Senator.

Yeah, 20 years is fine. I was talking about eight or ten years being too short. Sometimes it takes a while to get clout and the environment might not be right for your ideas even if they are fantastic.

I'm curious, would this limit only apply to a specific position? Theoretically someone could just keep changing their office and remain in power their entire life since the limit always resets.

@restricting campaign ads: Won't happen in the US. Depending on the specifics I can see it being shot down as a 1st Amendment violation long before it gets to the US Supreme Court. "Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech" is pretty clear-cut.

On a more practical level, the politicians who would be needed to pass the laws are the same ones who would be impaired by it. Had the 27th Amendment, f'rex, not already been in the pipeline since the original Bill of Rights, or if had been given an expiration date like the Equal Rights Amendment, it never would have passed.

Wait, we have term limits (for people that aren't the president)? Since when?

edited 29th Dec '12 4:17:23 PM by DeviantBraeburn

The thread is referring to how long you're in office before you need to be reelected.

Yeah, I guess we kind of have two conversations going on. Term limits, and term length. How long should a term be? And how many terms should you be allowed to have?

Well I think just about everybody agrees there need to be term limits. I've never met someone that thought otherwise. The main discussion point is how many of these terms you get and how long they last.

I don't. Term limits are a horrible idea that just get rid politicians with talent.

Yes but they also allow corrupt ones to stay in power. Either way the thread is actually about how long terms should last so I think we should move back to that.

Okay, term limits are horrible. Name one country that doesn't have any that isn't a dictatorship.

So is it by coincidence that Representatives (2), Senators (6), and the President (4) all have even number terms; or was that by design?

Do mean counties that don't have term limits for there leader/prime minster/president/etc. Or countries that have no term limits for any government position?

edited 29th Dec '12 4:33:25 PM by DeviantBraeburn

My proposal:

• Ban consecutive reelections. You sit a term out before you run again. (You can run again next term if you lose.)
• If you work in lobbying or the finance industry, you are not allowed to run for office until you have not been employed in those industries for up to two years prior to the election. Once your term is up, you are not permitted to work in those industries until two years have passed since the end of your term. Violation of these restrictions is a felony punishable by up to 1 year in prison and permanent prohibition from any elected federal or state office.
• You receive your paycheque for your entire term as an elected official as a single payment at the end of your term. Until then, you are granted a living allowance. Any income or investment assets you receive from other sources is subject to a yearly limit, and held for you in absentia until your term is up. Your paycheque is not subject to cost of living increases but is fixed to the average income of the poorest decile of the population in your area (riding if House member, state if Senator, entire country if President). If they get poorer, you're paid less; if they get richer, you're paid more.

Not exactly a popular set of proposals, but it'd kill the career politician problem stone dead.

As I don't know much about the governments of other countries I can't. Any European tropers out there that can help?

Still just because a dictatorship does it that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Why do you think dictatorships use them?

I never said it was. That doesn't mean it should remain that way. Personally I think they should all stay as they are.

I like all three of those.

edited 29th Dec '12 4:33:29 PM by Kostya

@Deviant: What politician likes to be thought of as "odd"?

Seriously, I don't think (without looking up the proceedings leading up to those particular schedules) there was anything more to the 2/4/6 than that they're even numbers, which general human psychology leans towards for reasons I don't know (and are beyond the subject of this thread, anyway).

^

We're not, though I think the main thing here is that while the president has term limits, the real authority is derived from the Senate, who do not have term limits, and are notoriously bought and paid for, which is essentially corrupt.

Even for the president?