Former Clinton Treasury secretary Larry Summers proposes that we switch from an eight-year, two-term limit for the union’s presidency to a six-year, single-term limit. He contends that by chucking the president’s second term, we can maybe prevent such gridlock and scandal as tends to especially afflict those second terms.
Six years is a long time to be stuck with an abysmal president, though.
And when the policies that a president imposes or encourages in his first term turn out to be an endless horror show — I’ll name no names here except Obama and Obamacare, IRS’s ideological targeting, NSA’s surveillance of us all, millions in tax dollars flung at bankrupt eco-firms like Solyndra, etc. — the more gridlock the better, seems to me. For it nobly reduces the extent to which we can be kicked in the teeth.
And I don’t like being kicked in the teeth.
However, throw in a national recall power so Americans can boot incumbents from office when they’re fed up with them, and I might accept that single six-year term, Professor.
In reply to Summers, some pundits argue that we should just drop presidential term limits altogether. We have heard the suggestion before. But I agree with blogger Matthew Dickinson. He argues in a piece for Christian Science Monitor that whatever the abuses plaguing term two, these must pale in comparison to the problems which flow from enabling presidents-for-life. Their abuses of power, around the world, are legion, and nigh unstoppable.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
6 replies on “Term Limits: Let’s Keep ’em”
an FYI. i picked this up on a news aggregator because i really don’t read HuffPo but it is a good history lesson on ISIS. Hint: it’s all about Saudi Arabia and who they choose to be, the Saudi Arabia we support:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/isis-wahhabism-saudi-arabia_b_5717157.html
Our foreign policy is so screwed up we they(white house, state & dod) don’t have a clue which way they are going and russia/china know it and are challenging our moral right to be world cop.
My idea would be for a POTUS of one term lasting five years. Election expenses might increase. The benefit would be that POTUS enters and/or leaves office during different Congresses.
Better yet would be a USA in which the POTUS was so powerless (aka Constitutional) that the office holder was of little concern.
another OT:
Since everybody is now pounding the drums on ISIS, i think we should say to Iraq, “We paid for the first one and if you want us in here again, you pick up the tab”.
My number one military strategy is, since no side in the Middle East really likes us, we should let them chop each other up so we only have to deal with one faction when that’s over rather than keep spending ourselves into oblivion and getting Americans killed and maimed in the process.
Or let David Cameron, who is in huge political trouble at home(and what do politicians do when they get in trouble at home? why start a war to build up nationalist sentiment, which is probably what obummah is doing too) carry the ball.
Surprise, surprise. It’s from Judicial Watch but they claim “high level sources”:
Agents across a number of Homeland Security, Justice and Defense agencies have all been placed on alert and instructed to aggressively work all possible leads and sources concerning this imminent terrorist threat.
Specifically, Judicial Watch sources reveal that the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is confirmed to now be operating in Juarez, a famously crime-infested narcotics hotbed situated across from El Paso, Texas. Violent crimes are so rampant in Juarez that the U.S. State Department has issued a number of travel warnings for anyone planning to go there. The last one was issued just a few days ago.
Intelligence officials have picked up radio talk and chatter indicating that the terrorist groups are going to “carry out an attack on the border,” according to one JW source. “It’s coming very soon,” according to this high-level source, who clearly identified the groups planning the plots as “ISIS and Al Qaeda.” An attack is so imminent that the commanding general at Ft. Bliss, the U.S. Army post in El Paso, is being briefed, another source confirms. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not respond to multiple inquiries from Judicial Watch, both telephonic and in writing, about this information.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/386694/judicial-watch-feds-bulletin-describes-threat-imminent-terrorist-attack-southern
Lynn?
OT: “The whole border thing”
The Texas law enforcement bulletin cites suspected fighters from the terrorist group previously known as ISIS and based in Syria and Iraq as eyeing a border crossing.
“The identities of persons operating these accounts cannot be independently verified; however the accounts were selected for monitoring based on several indications that they have been used by actual ISIS militants for propaganda purposes and collectively reach tens of thousands of followers,” states the bulletin. “One account was verified as belonging to an individual located in Mosul, Iraq.”
Some 32 Twitter and Facebook posts monitored by law enforcement over one recent week reflected interest in the southern border, according to the bulletin. The messages, which were forwarded thousands of times, included calls for jihadists to cross over from Mexico to carry out attacks and even alluded to a recent video by U.S. activist James O’Keefe, who was recorded coming across the Rio Grande valley in an Usama bin Laden costume.
The bulletin details numerous “calls for border infiltration” on social media, including one from a militant confirmed to be in Mosul, Iraq who explicitly beckons the “Islamic State to send a special force to America across the border with Mexico.”
“This Twitter account holder, who is the administrator of an ISIS propaganda trading group, stated that the time was right for such an action because ‘the US-Mexican border is now open large numbers of people crossing,’” the bulletin said.
Another message sent out via Twitter suggested that Islamic State fighters have already entered the U.S. via the border, warning that, as a result, “Americans in for ruin (sic).”
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/08/29/online-posts-show-isis-eyeing-mexican-border-says-law-enforcment-bulletin/
Obama has no idea what he’s doing. Scandal after scandal. It’s like he’s trying some kind of skunk tactic that will make us forget all the previous scandals by bringing in more, scarier scandals.