First, I need to stipulate that I never have aspired to be King of the World, but if somehow were it to happen, there are a few things I would change about the current political climate.
For starters:
- I would limit the U.S. president to a single six-year term, kind of like what they do in Mexico. Presidents there run for a single term and then they’re gone.
What is the advantage here? The president doesn’t campaign for re-election, for starters, and he or she then gets to concentrate solely on legislative agendas.
Too often presidents take office at the start of their first term and begin making speeches aimed appealing to voting blocs that would favor them in a run for their second term. It’s a fairly bipartisan affliction, so my friends on the left can accuse me all they want of offering a “both sides do it” escape clause. Too bad. I just happen to believe it’s true.
I offer this change while reminding readers of this blog that I oppose term limits already. I subscribe to the notion that elections serve as “term limits” if voters believe the officeholder doesn’t deserve to be re-elected.
- Furthermore, I would like to see terms of House members extended from two years to three or maybe four years. That, too, removes the need for House members to begin their re-election quest immediately upon taking office.
A congressman once told me that he had to dedicate a certain number of hours every week to campaign fundraising, which took time away from research and legislating. It was an unwritten rule, he said, but one that a congressman or woman dare not ignore if he or she wanted to serve beyond that single term.
I wouldn’t trifle with the length of U.S. Senate terms. No need to extend them beyond the six years to which we elect them. Besides, doing so might fill a senator with a notion that since he or she is elected to serve longer than the president that he or she is more important than the commander in chief. We’ve got too many senatorial grandstanders already.
None of this is likely to happen. I am just venting over what I see is serious damage to the political fabric.
Of course, none of this answers the need to stop elected certifiable dumbasses to high public office. We’ll have to deal seriously with that matter later.