- Propose a constitutional amendment that imposes term limits on all members of Congress.
- A five-year ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service.
If he were to get these passed and get nothing else done as president, he would go down as one of the most important presidents in recent history.
The problem is not that politicians can get elected for decades, the problem is that incumbents have an unfair advantage. Fix that problem and term limits become a non-factor.
Plus, to look at how ineffective rules like that are, Putin is president of Russia again despite their being term limits intended to prevent that.
If congress was limited to eight years like the president they'd barely be getting the hang of it when you turf them out.
What about term limits for CEOs? Mayors? Football players?
It's absurd. Remove barriers to competition and keep the best by having a robust, democratic process to weed out those who are bad.
A badly thought out term limit implementation would see people flip from the house to the senate and back again, perhaps working in tandem to fend off any competition. What point does that useless exercise serve?
It's also hilarious that people have even an inkling of hope that a majority of Congress would impose limits on their own power such as the type that is being discussed.
Would you vote in favor of removing yourself from your position?
Even if YOU would, do you think a majority of your coworkers would?
If we can get new non-entrenched people in power maybe we'd see better governance --otherwise why not create a ruling class, if career politicians execute better? Note, I would not advocate for a ruling class but people seem to be saying people who know governance and politics govern better (presuming experience means they can get things done for their constituency).
You don't just try random shit at the national level and see how it works out. If you really think this is a great idea, try it at the state level, see how it plays out over decades and then get back to us.
I agree that non-entrenched people are better for governance, but let's pin the blame on the real problem here: Corporate sponsorship of politicians. They do not care if they have to sponsor some new politician every eight years. It might even save them some money since these perennially new politicians would have less clout. It costs a lot more to buy a House Majority leader who's got 30 years of experience than Rep. Nobody who's a first-timer.
You need to think these things through to their inevitable conclusion.
One way you might even the playing field for opponents is to pay back a portion of the campaign costs on a per-vote received basis but only to non-incumbent candidates. It seems absurd to have to use public money to foster democracy, but there are far worse things to spend it on.
Any ideas on how to de-corporatize the system? I don't think term limits help, in fact they make it worse.
You can fine-tune this a bit, like have minimum vote requirements (e.g. 5% of the votes) in order to be part of the program, but the basic idea helps frame things better.
If you look at how most elections go, the extreme fringe candidates get at most hundreds of votes, it's inconsequential in the scheme of things.
This was roughly how it worked at the federal level in Canada until the Conservative party cancelled it in 2015. If you got at least 2% of the vote you got a "per-vote subsidy" of $1.75 per vote.
The reason the Conservative party killed the program was because it hurt the other parties more than it hurt them. As they were always better at raising money, anything that cut funding to the other parties was seen as a big win for them: Like the Republicans they are very self-interested.
There are multiple parties active in the Canadian system, some only getting 5-10% of the votes, which means they're at even more of a disadvantage than before.
http://www.economist.com/node/1897472
"Initiatives are also responsible for another feature that makes the Assembly unworkable: term limits. These may sometimes be desirable but in California they are simply too short. Proposition 140 set them at six years for Assembly members, eight for state senators.
"As a result, representatives do not have a good grasp of the details of bills, have little long-term loyalty to the institution they serve and can sometimes be unduly influenced by more experienced lobbyists. No sooner do people become head of the assembly, or of an important committee, than they are term-limited out. Legislative leadership becomes almost impossible."
I mean, that is generally why someone gets reelected, because they are popular with the people that vote for them. Representatives that don't serve their constituents aren't all that successful at getting reelected.
So in my world view, term limits hand more power to parties. Bad.
If term limits are good enough for the President, they're good enough for Congress.
Term limits were added for the President because Congress got grumpy that FDR kept winning. It was pure partisan politics. Without them, we might've wound up with a third Obama term instead of Trump.
He had an inordinate amount of power that we are very lucky he used mostly benignly. The two term only precedent was a defacto rule that only became written because it was broken.
It was enacted at the height of FDR's popularity, too.
Which failed, and could easily be attempted by a one-term president too. I'm not sure what that has to do with term limits.
> It was enacted at the height of FDR's popularity, too.
It was enacted by a Republican-controlled congress after FDR's death.
FDR was exceptional but a large part of why he was reelected was because of ongoing events. In any other situation he would not have. The American people after his death wisely decided it wasn't good for someone to have power for 13+ years. That turns the office into something imperial. Packing the court was an abuse of power that he was only able to attempt because he was popular, and popularity isn't always the best way to pick leaders.
Other incredible presidents didn't get three terms (Roosevelt comes to find). Obama has at best been a good president. Does he really deserve 12 years? Is he more deserving of that than all other presidents but FDR? Historically, no. And without the rule, he'd get it by default as he's obviously better than Trump and incumbent advantage and all that.
Without term limits we're just waiting for the bizarro Nixon in Watchmen to show up...and given time it would happen. Maybe Trump would be it.
In his second term. So, hardly a dangerous protection re against by term limits.
> He had an inordinate amount of power
As the failure of the court packing scheme demonstrates, he didn't have an "inordinate amount of power" personally, he was just, on other issues, successful at convincing others with power that his preferred approaches were desirable.
I do think that there should be term limits for high executive positions though. They are different than legislative positions, as they involve a good deal more individual power.
I think gerrymandering has more to do with this than them actually being popular in the areas they're from.
The type of gerrymandering that shaves partisan districts to create a contested district is also bad under term limits, a great representative can be shoved aside by the term limit and replaced by some party operator.
People keep electing an otherwise terrible politician because "he was effective in bringing (back) money from D.C. to build our schools".
In other words, reverse bribery.
I used to be pro term limits, but my conversation with her was very eye opening.
It was something I'd never thought about before and it also made me think about term limits and how things are not as simple as they seem.
Term limits for elected officials just shift the balance of knowledge and experience to lobbyists. Not something to get behind. (Reforming the electoral system so that there is meaningful, non-binary choice, deals with the negative aspects of incumbency without the problems term limits has. But term limits are a favorite proposal because they benefit the already powerful lobbies.)
> A five-year ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service.
So the pool of people willing to take such positions is limited to those who can't get a secure job relating to public policy so that the ban from work that isn't dependent on the term of office of an elected official doesn't actually lose them anything. Again, another thing that tips the balance of knowledge and skill in favor of lobbies and out of the public sector.
They are the kind of reforms that sound good if you haven't thought the effects through.
Well, everyone said Trump could never become the GOP nominee. Then everyone said he could never become President.
I hope people keep saying that he can't do these things.
But go ahead, keep living in your made up dream world where Trump can wave his scepter and make all those nice little promises he made come true.
It's going to be an interesting 4 years ahead. May be even 8.
And then throw both out and start again.
The one way you could make Congress worse is to make it so that people didn't get the members they want in the elections they do vote in because their choices are even more restricted than they are now, while still hating the choices everyone else makes.
Term limits for Congress would be one way of achieving that.
If we must have public officials (and I don't think we should have quite as many but that's a topic for another day), then it would be better to have a way to quickly isolate the ones who don't deliver and remove them for good before more damage is done. If something they did works, we can pick other officials who promise to build on what the previous officials had done.
Term limits: Does nothing to stop poor/corrupt lawmakers from holding office while also limiting the amount of domain knowledge present in Congress.
Lobbying ban: A shorter one already exists that is routinely ignored or skirted by claiming a different title/role while still being a lobbyist. Extending the ban is just asking for more people to flaunt it. The real solution is to aggressively enforce the ban or better yet, try and reduce the role of money in politics as much as possible. I doubt the latter is likely given the bank accounts of the cabinet appointees.
California did this for their state legislature. The result was that there were no more long term legislators that knew the ropes and could guide new legislators and teach them how to do everything, and so the most experienced people around ended up being the lobbyists, who would come in and say "Oh, don't worry about it, we'll help you!" and then would go off and write the bills for people, etc.
there were no more long term legislators that knew the ropes
There is little of "teach them how to do everything"; it's more about (experienced leadership) telling them what to do regardless of tenure. Have you ever watched committee meetings? Understand the concept of "is this an 'A' vote or a 'B' vote", with members of whatever tenure marching in lock-step?
Many need Remedial Parliamentary Procedure 1A, and lots can't read legislation worth crap... including long-tenured ones. Otherwise, it's do-as-your-told-or-you-don't-get-campaign-money.
The problem isn't term limits; it's one-party rule.
Less experienced congresscritters? → More willing to let lobbyists do the footwork, less likely to see their game.
Fewer congresscritters becoming lobbyists? → Less competition for corporate lobbyists from those who may give a hoot about their former constituents.
If this really was good for the lobbyists, it would have been done before.
It is. It's huge.
The problem is ... his portfolio is not 'stocks and bonds' that he can easily liquidate, or put in a blind trust.
He has tons of huge properties - to put them up on the chopping block would mean a huge fire sale - and totally unfair.
I also saw a lawyer indicate that the buyers of such properties - because they'd be getting a bargain - could be perceived as getting massive 'favour' from the sitting president - and that in and of itself would be a major conflict of interest.
So in his defence - it's complicated.
That said - there should be a way of putting up a much bigger firewall between him and Trump Co.
As it stands, it's already bad ... foreign delegations - without pressuring - may feel incented to use 'Trump Hotels' etc. etc..
I think it's going to be a drag on him, because there'll be tons of people invariably using Trump-owned facilities - and every time it happens - it will be in the press, and it will look bad irrespective of if there was any wrongdoing.
It's a mess, I don't see any clean way out of it.
That being said, he has appeared to be entirely uninterested in doing much to resolve it.
"Oh, my family will look after it. Hey, family, come visit dignitaries with me." "Oh, they'll run it from New York. I'll spend a few nights a week in New York at my office there. We won't talk about anything business related, promise."
It would be like a company firing all their engineers every 4 years, but keeping the management around. How good a product do you think that is likely to produce?
At the presidential level, term limits have the sole upside of preventing cults of personality from forming.
(by forcing people to sell their kids as food).
Disregarding the hyperbole (not to mention that the idea has been presented before, with mixed results), Trump's promises are suspect at best, and i would caution anyone thinking of "getting behind them".
This always comes across as condescending to me. You can caution me all you want. I can caution you about your political views too. Does cautioning people do anything?
Please consider signing this petition to eliminate gerrymandering by using an open source algorithm to draw congressional districts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13453662
One definition of fair: minimize geographic size of each district.
Another: maximize demographic uniformity of each district.
Another: maximize demographic diversity of each district.
These are clearly impossible goals that are put on there so people can be like "See, Trump's not all that bad! He's gonna the drain the swamp!". But let's be real, it was never a priority and will never happen.