What are term limits and why were they started?

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3 What are term limits and why were they started? The top government office of the United States is the presidency. You probably already know that we elect a president every four years. This four-year period is called a term. Term limits refers to the total number of terms a president is allowed to serve, which by law is two four-year terms, or eight years total. Sometimes the current president is reelected after the first term, like President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush, while at other times, the president isn t reelected, like President Bush s father, George H.W. Bush, and serves only one term. But what if presidents could run for office and be reelected as many times as we, the people, thought they deserved? Do you think that would be a good thing or a bad thing? Most people would probably answer that it would depend on whether or not they liked the president who was in office at the time. But what about what s best for our country as a whole? Should a president be allowed to serve for more than eight years? The signing of the United States Constitution 5

4 The length of time a president can serve is such an important issue that it s discussed in our Constitution, which is the supreme law of our country. Written by our Founding Fathers, the Constitution of the United States clearly outlines the term limits of each major government office. While the president can be elected to serve up to eight years total, members of the House of Representatives and the Senate can serve for much longer. People are elected to the House for two-year terms and to the Senate for six-year terms, but there s no limit to the number of terms they may serve. This means that members of Congress can stay in office longer than the president! It s possible that they could be reelected enough times to serve for the rest of their lives. The only officials who serve for life without having to be elected are the justices of the Supreme Court, the highest court in the country, and they are appointed by the president (with consent of the Senate), not elected by the people. The reason these justices are allowed to serve for life is so that their decisions won t be affected by politics. They are expected to make decisions based on their interpretation of the Constitution and the aims of the Founding Fathers, not what they think will please the president who appointed them. But the presidency is a different story. Should our president be able to serve longer than eight years? Or are we better off keeping things the way they are? First, let s look at how term limits came about. George Washington, our very first president, started it all. In 1796, after serving two terms, President Washington published a farewell address and did not seek reelection. At the time there no law in place stating he had step down, but Washington he wanted to resume life as a private citizen and that increasing age made it difficult him to lead the country. This set a or an example, for the future. was to said his for precedent, George Washington 6

5 It was our third president, Thomas Jefferson, who recommended a two-term limit for the presidency. Jefferson feared that without limits, a president might be able to stay in office for life, and he thought this was too similar to the monarchy in England, where a king or queen remained in power for life. Because the United States had only recently won independence from England, President Jefferson thought that the new country s government should be very different from England s. To achieve this, he argued that the president of the United States of America shouldn t remain in power for too long. One problem with power is that it can change a person. Those in positions of power may start to care more about how important they are rather than what they need to do to help the people they are supposed to serve. President Jefferson thought that if leaders knew they had only a short time in which to make their mark, they would work harder to accomplish as much as possible during their limited time in office. The idea was that frequent presidential elections would keep those in power on their best behavior. However, despite Jefferson s suggestion, nothing was done at the time about limiting the president s time in office. It didn t really matter, though, because few presidents after Jefferson tried to serve for more than two terms, even though no law prevented it. One president who did try was Ulysses S. Grant, our eighteenth president. Grant was elected president in 1868, and when his second term was almost up, he tried but failed to get the Republican party to support him and nominate him for a third term. It wasn t until 1940, when Democrat Franklin Roosevelt was in office, that things finally changed. Ulysses S. Grant 7

6 During WW II, many Americans wanted to keep President Roosevelt in office. World War II was raging in Europe, and because United States citizens didn t like the idea of switching presidents in the middle of such disorder abroad, President Roosevelt was elected for a third term. Then, in 1944, he won yet another term his fourth. President Roosevelt died the next year, but if he had lived, who knows how long he might have continued to serve as president? The fact that Roosevelt, if he hadn t died, might have continued to be reelected for years to come caused concern. People worried that in the future a president would get reelected again and again, end up with too much power, and do harm to the nation. The issue became important enough after Roosevelt s death for Congress to propose an amendment, or addition, to the Constitution. Called the Twenty-Second Amendment, this amendment states that a president cannot be elected for more than two four-year terms. Congress voted on and passed the amendment in It became law in 1951 after being approved by the states. 8

7 In recent years, however, there has been talk about changing presidential term limits. Former President Bill Clinton favors changing the amendment. He feels that former presidents should be allowed to run for office again, but only after some time has passed following the first two terms. He believes that there might be times in the future when United States citizens will want to revisit tried and true leadership. For example, if a president had led the country through war and successfully reestablished the peace, then ten years later, if war happened to Former President Bill Clinton break out again under a different president, United States citizens might decide that they wanted the former president s wartime leadership experience. Bill Clinton isn t the only past president to favor changing term limits. Ronald Reagan also wanted to abolish them, and so does President George W. Bush. But is this only because all these men wanted to run again? Were they thinking of the good of the country or just what would be best for themselves? In this section of the book, we ll think about and discuss why having presidential term limits is a good thing for our country. 9

8 If we do away with term limits, presidents might focus more on staying in office than on serving their constituents. Think about a president serving for life. If we do away with term limits, it could happen. But if a president served for that long, he or she might end up giving more time and attention to getting reelected than to actually serving the country s citizens. A politician s constituents are the people the politician serves. Would elected officials think more about their careers than their constituents if there weren t term limits? Politicians who stay in office for as long as they can and who make politics their life s work are called career politicians. Many people believe that these politicians are more determined to do whatever it takes to stay in office than to do what is good for the people and the country. For example, to help pay for their campaigns, some senators have accepted donations from big businesses that want them to pass laws that will help these businesses. The longer these senators serve, the more of these connections they have, and the more they may feel they owe the businesspeople who have helped them rather than the people they serve. Many fear that without term limits, the same problem might arise with the president. You might think that if presidents aren t popular with a majority of people, they couldn t get reelected, but that s not always true. George W. Bush s reelection in 2004 was narrowly won. Almost half the people who went to the polls did not vote for him for a second term. Bush still got reelected, but that doesn t necessarily mean the majority of United States citizens wanted him as president for a second term. It just means that the majority of people who voted wanted him to win. However, because only about 60 percent of the people who were eligible to vote actually did so in 2004, the voices of many of our country s people weren t heard. We didn t necessarily elect the most popular candidate. 10

9 Politicians should be in touch with the people. Term limits make this possible. Politicians who have worked in the government for many years often become insiders, which means they are completely comfortable with the workings of the government and might even have advantages that regular people do not. These perks can make a politician s life better and easier than that of a typical person, and they can also make it harder for the politician to be able to understand what the average citizen goes through on a day-to-day basis. These career politicians can be completely blind to the problems of their constituents, because the advantages they have from Drivers line up at a gas station during a gasoline shortage. 11

10 working in government mean they don t face the difficulties experienced by average people. It follows that if presidents are able to serve for many terms, they might lose touch with what life is really like for their constituents. For example, in an oil crisis, a president might tell people to drive less in order to save gasoline. This might make sense to a president who does not have to worry about how he will get where he wants to go. But it might not make sense to the majority of Americans who must drive to get to their jobs and, therefore, can t drive less. President Thomas Jefferson believed it was wrong for politicians to hold positions of power for so long that they would begin to feel superior to everyone else. By electing candidates that have the most in common with the people in the communities they are supposed to serve, the American people should be able to take back some control of their government. The candidates who are most likely to be in touch with average citizens are those who haven t been in politics for too long. Think about it. Who would make a better president: a person who has regular contact and talks often with average citizens, or someone who is separated from ordinary Americans and has contact only with fellow politicians? 12

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12 What are term limits and why should we do away with them? Term limits refers to the amount of time that an elected United States government official can legally serve in a particular office. For example, the president of the United States is allowed to serve for two four-year terms. Then, at the end of the second term, even if the president is doing a great job running the country and is loved by the American people, new presidential candidates are nominated. A president cannot run for a third term. This is the law. But is it a good law? The leaders who were responsible for establishing our country s government and its laws believed in democracy. In a democracy, we the people the country s citizens have the right to vote for whomever we want. The election of the president is in our hands. In our country s early days, there was no such thing as term limits; presidents could run for reelection as many times as they wanted. However, the United States very first president, George Washington, stepped down from the presidency after serving two terms. He wasn t voted out; he just decided that he wanted to be a private citizen once again. He felt that growing older made it hard for him to perform the duties that his office required. Thomas Jefferson, the United States third president, suggested setting a two-term limit for the office of president. However, it s important to remember that times were very different then. America had only recently won independence from England, a country with an all-powerful leader a king who served for life. United States citizens didn t want their new country s government to be anything like England s monarchy, where kings or queens often ruled for decades. Jefferson feared that if limits weren t placed on the amount of time a president could serve, 5 Thomas Jefferson

13 a situation could arise in which we had a president for life who would be just like a king. It is easy to see how, more than 200 years ago, the idea of presidential term limits would have been appealing. Our country s government was not yet fully formed, so the fear of having a kinglike ruler was a very real one. However, more than two centuries later, isn t it time to reexamine what kind of government would be best for our nation now? Because our country s early presidents set an example of serving for only two terms, that s the way things remained until At that time, allies of the United States were fighting in World War II, and instead of turning over the presidency to a new candidate who lacked wartime experience, Democratic president Franklin Roosevelt decided to run for a third term. He was reelected. Four years later, Roosevelt, who was still popular with the people, ran for and won a fourth term. Members of the opposing Republican party began to worry that a Republican president might never again sit in the White House. Others, too, became concerned about the possibility that in the future a president they didn t like could remain in office for decades even for life! To prevent this from happening, Congress proposed that an amendment, or addition, be made to the United States Constitution (the supreme law of our country) limiting the amount President Roosevelt being inaugurated for a fourth term in

14 of time a person could serve as president. The amendment (called the Twenty-Second Amendment) states that a president cannot be elected for more than two four-year terms. But let s think about this law. If a president is only allowed to be elected to serve for a total of eight years, is this really democratic? After all, aren t the people supposed to be the ones who decide who becomes president? And if the people want a certain person to remain as president past the two-term limit, shouldn t it be their right to make this happen? With term limits, power is taken out of the hands of the people. If voters don t want a particular president, they should have the power to vote that president out of office. The decision shouldn t be made for them in the form of term limits. Presidents Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush believed that term limits should be changed. Our government is supposed to be for and by the people. That means if we want to elect a president for 5 or even 10 terms, we should have that right. But let s take a closer look at the issues and investigate why doing away with term limits is really a good idea. Originally, the Constitution did not include any provisions for presidential term limits. 7

15 Being president is a difficult job. To be good at it, a person needs experience. Think about your favorite professional sports team or a team you play on yourself. Who would you prefer to have on your team: someone with lots of experience playing that sport or someone completely new to the game? Most people who are good at what they do for example, athletes, musicians, and artists got that way through many years of practice and learning. It s the same with politicians. It takes time for politicians to learn the ways of government and figure out how to get things done quickly and efficiently. With term limits in place, a president has only two full terms in which to learn the ins and outs of the job and how to do it well. Being president might be the most challenging job in our country. After all, it s the United States highest government office. Shouldn t the president be given more time to become an expert at the job? Sports teams count on experienced athletes like Derek Jeter (top) to give them a winning edge. 8

16 The fact that we have presidential term limits suggests that Americans place less importance on having an experienced president in office than on having a new face in the position every four or eight years. Being president of the United States is perhaps the most difficult job in the world, so of course it requires having an experienced person in the position. Presidents have to master the skills necessary to successfully run the country and deal with foreign affairs the same way that a musician needs to master the guitar or a baseball player needs to master playing shortstop. Sure, pure talent helps, but it can t make up for a lack of experience. Experienced politicians are the ones with the knowledge about what has worked and not worked in the past, and how best to work with the members of Congress and other politicians and world leaders to get things done. 9

17 If presidents know their time will not be cut short by term limits, they can better use that time to get things done. It takes time for presidents not only to gain experience but also to establish policies and accomplish things that are good for the country. Because of term limits, even excellent presidents have only eight years to accomplish everything that they promised during the campaign. Also, in the last couple of years of the second term, the next election campaign begins, and the president becomes what is called a lame duck. A lame-duck president is less able to get things done, because other politicians, such as members of Congress who are responsible for either approving or rejecting the president s programs, know that there s a good chance the new president might work to reverse the decision anyway. What s the point of going out on a limb to support a president who will soon be out of office? With a lame-duck president, power begins to shift to other politicians who might or might not support the president s projects, depending on who they suppose the next president will be. Most politicians prefer to get on the good side of the frontrunner in the race to become the next president rather than support the current lame duck. As a result, lame-duck presidents don t have as much motivation to work hard. They have no chance of being reelected, so why bother? But if there weren t term limits, the president would have hopes of winning the next election, spurring him or her on to accomplish great things. No more lame ducks. 10 Newly elected President George W. Bush is congratulated by President Bill Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore.