Presidential Terms Poll

© Chad Card

The results of the first poll are in and the first thing I have to say is that I hope the percentage of those who voted from the total number of people who visited my blog--especially those from the US, since this is a question more geared towards US citizens--is not indicative of real voting numbers.  If I assume those who voted were all from the US, only 4.5% of people from the US who visited my blog actually placed a vote.  I certainly hope more people participate in the next poll.  It is an easy way for me to gauge the interests and the opinions of those who are visiting.

The results are:
41% of the voters liked the idea of a limit to one term of six years for the president of the United States, 53% wanted to keep the term limits as currently constituted, and 6% thought we should just get rid of term limits altogether.  I'm actually quite intrigued by the one voter who represents the 6% of this poll.  I wonder if the idea would be to allow a situation similar to Senate and House elections, where there are no limits and as long as people keep winning their respective elections they are able to remain in office?  Or possibly the idea is more extreme like a dictatorship.  It is hard to speculate and although I appreciate this individual's vote, I would have to politely disagree with the concept of eliminating presidential term limits.

© Chad Card

There is the old adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely and it is my fear that an absence of term limits for the president of the United States, who is still considered the most powerful person in the world, would lead to major corruption in the executive branch of government.  This would not only have horrible repercussions for US citizens, but could potentially wreak havoc on a number of other world nations.  I'm inclined to say that the lack of term limits for senators and representatives has already proven to have corrupted the legislative system and it is this corruption that has produced the ragged state in which we find the US government today, but that is an argument for another day.

It can be argued that the US managed just fine without term limits before the Twenty-second Amendment was passed in 1947 and ratified in 1951, which created the two-term limit for the presidency of the United States.  No president served more than two terms other than Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected to a fourth term, but died within the first year.  Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first president confined by the two-term limit, feared the loss of power  and the lame duck status the term limit would create, but he eventually decided that it gave him more power because he could be seen as acting in the best interest of the country and not to win another election.

The majority of voters (9) would like to see the presidential term limits remain as they are.  Most, if not all, of the people who have visited this blog don't know a US presidency without the term limit set by the Twenty-second Amendment.  They may also feel, like Eisenhower did, that the final term actually provides the president the opportunity to act in the best interest of the country and not for one's own best interest of electability in the future.  Unfortunately, the media has taken to referring to a two-term president as a lame duck and this labeling permeates throughout the consciousness of the masses and, I am sure, also affects the actual productiveness of the president's interactions with the legislative branch.

© Chad Card

If we take this as the general case, then a two-term president ultimately has about 3 1/2 years of productivity.  I'm sure many will disagree with this analysis, but this is how I see it.  The first year of a presidency is spent analyzing the policies and actions of the preceding president and determining what can remain as a part of the new president's vision and what has to go or be exploited to demonstrate how the new president is better than the last one.  This first year is still a year of campaigning to ensure the American people that they made the right choice and hopefully to convince those who voted otherwise of the same thing.  I do not consider this a productive year for the president.  The second year of the first term can definitely be considered a productive year.  There is enough distance between the outgoing and incoming president so that mistakes can no longer be blamed on the prior president (for the most part).  People no longer want to hear about the mistakes of the past, they want to know what the new president is doing to correct things.  As the president moves into the third year, re-election becomes a strong influence in the presidency and decisions are made not based on the best choices for the long-term future of the country, but on what will make the president look good short-term so that a re-election can be secured.  I would say about half of this year is productive.  The fourth year of the first term is spent campaigning for re-election, which makes this by far the least productive year of the presidency.

Now we enter the the second term.  The first two years are probably the most productive out of the 8 years in office.  There is no need to separate oneself from a prior president, policies are already set in motion and the president can continue to work towards achieving one's vision for the country's future.  By the third year, the media begins to talk about the lame duck as the legislative branch looks to ride out the rest of the presidency and looks forward to the new Commander in Chief.  Obviously, if the president's party is the same as the party majority in the House and Senate then the president can be more effective in the last years of one's presidency, but even then, these years tend to be more about maintaining the status quo so that a candidate from the president's party will have a good chance at election.  If the president were to do something extreme and these actions failed, then the chances of the same party remaining in power are ultimately lost.

© Chad Card

This brings us to the final choice presented in this poll.  6 voters and I chose the option of changing the term limit to one term, but extending the years of service from four to six years.  This is my reasoning for such a change.  Like I stated above, the first year of any presidency is a time to weed through everything that has come before and to learn what it really means to be president of the United States.  No one can truly know what this is like and what it entails until one becomes president.  With a six-year term, years 2-5 can be productive and there isn't the large gap in continuity that is created by the need to campaign for re-election or to create policies that only fulfill this short-term goal.  The president would no longer have to campaign while in office and could focus on the true welfare of the nation.  With this change, there is at least the same amount of productive time for the president, possibly more, as there is with a two-term president.  The advantage to the six-year single term presidency is the continuity of the president's administration and eliminating the need to campaign in office, thus eliminating the need to act in one's own self interest instead of the interest of the nation as a whole.


I can see that people like the four-year two-term limit because it potentially shortens the service of a "bad" president if one is unable to win re-election, but I truly believe that such a structure actually gives a president little time to demonstrate one's capacity as president in the first term for the reasons I have already discussed.  I believe the six-year single term offers a better alternative to the problems that occur with the current system while still restricting an individual presidency from the possibility of major corruption.  I look forward to reading any thoughts you may have on what I have presented here.