Many people support the idea of term limits for elected officials in the U.S. However, such support is, unsurprisingly, scanty among the officials themselves.
I think this could be done effectively without changing existing laws. All that's needed might be a website where people could sign up to say, effectively, "I will never vote for a third consecutive term for any official in any position."
If only 5% of a given electorate took the pledge, in most elections no candidate would ever get a third consecutive term -- the margins are usually narrower than 10%. Further, the incumbent's party would have to decide: Do we pour enough $ into this campaign to overcome a 10 point lead, or is it cheaper to run someone else in this election and let the incumbent run for some other job? Most of the time, the party would decide to run someone else, I think.
If the incumbent is all that good, she/he will be good in some other job. They can go do that for a term and come back, if they like.
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It is exceedingly difficult to evaluate the capability of an elected official on the basis of term in office. Some are valuable social instruments and some are crooks. These days the crooks seem to be in the forefront but perhaps this has always been true. An experienced honest legislator is a valuable person and perhaps should be available for re-election. A crook should not be permitted to have an indefinite office term. The poison in the system is the corporate wealth that bends morality and encourages dishonesty in order to sustain a compliant office holder to compromise honesty to remain in office.
I suppose this could devolve into a discussion of the merits of term limits; I rather hoped to avoid that, since there's little new to add to the discussion.
I was trying to propose a tool whereby people who like the idea of term limits could implement this equivalent without waiting on the lawmakers.
Whether a lawmaker thinks he's good, bad, or indifferent, he's unlikely to think he should give up the power of incumbency.
I think having metrics developed for tracking the efforts of Government officials would be more useful. I we could readily see how each of our representatives voted on every issue, that would be useful. If we could see who is financially supporting our representatives, that would be useful. If we could readily see the people involved with Bills and the content and ramifications of Bills, that would be useful. My biggest headache is not knowing what my representatives are really doing, and who is feeding them money and instructions under the table.
Government representatives should not be allowed to have any control over their wages. A human resources group should propose wages and compensation. But the individual States should have to vote to ratify those wages and benefits. As for the President, the 50 States should have to vote to ratify wages paid to the President at the two-year point during elections for representatives.
Performance based wages.
Government representatives should not be allowed to have any control over their wages. A human resources group should propose wages and compensation. But the individual States should have to vote to ratify those wages and benefits. As for the President, the 50 States should have to vote to ratify wages paid to the President at the two-year point during elections for representatives.
Performance based wages.
The problem with limiting terms is that it takes many years to develop relationships and become strongly influential as a representative. So the real people that would sustain power would be the advisors and lobbyists, because their term is not limited and they will amass the most knowledge to manipulate the system. Although throwing a monkey wrench into the system more often might be beneficial.