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Off and on in various circles the idea of mandating term limits for various elected officials is discussed with varying degrees of interest. I wonder if many of these discussions would exist in the absence of the 22nd Amendment.
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
The two sides of the debate can be generally summarized as “we need fresh ideas/faces in Congress, incumbents have too much advantage in elections, the office is more important than the person holding it” and “the people should be free to decide when to replace their elected officials without being tied to an artificial limit, these jobs benefit from experience, constant turnover favors special interests.”
In my view each side has some valid concerns. Conveniently the 22nd amendment seems to feel non-restrictive of the peoples ability to choose because only one president ever served more than two terms in 160 years under the Constitution before it was adopted and as far as I know only one president since has made any vocal portion of the voters wish to not be limited to two terms.
I have not yet decided for sure whether an artificial limit placed on a really good elected leader would be less burdensome than the common practice of perpetual incumbency – I suspect that it would. What i know is that I would like to see a lot more turnover among elected officials so that people are reminded that whoever they elect is replaceable – ideally that would happen without having to impose artificial limits as it has for our presidency for the majority of our nations history.
4 replies on “Constitutional Amendment 22”
The 22nd Amendment was as much as response to the abuse of executive power as anything else. After a president that blatantly and openly threatened and abused the judiciary to force his agenda, I imagine that Congress was fearful of elected kings and an imbalance of powers.
In case anyone is confused, my uncertainty over term limits in general should not be construed as an argument against the 22nd amendment. I think that the amendment is just fine – especially considering the fact that we had a history of not keeping presidents beyond two terms anyway (whether they retired or were beaten by a challenger).
Q: How many “really good elected leader[s]” — so good that you wouldn’t want to replace them with ANY of the other people in that jurisdiction — have you seen during your lifetime?
Q: How many elected officials that stay in office for a long time do not become part of the problem they originally campaigned to fix?
Perhaps these numbers are so incredibly small that the loss of such valuable service after a few years due to term limits would not be too heavy a price to pay for the benefits that could be derived by limiting service terms.
A1: ZERO
A2: None that I can recall.
I guess my token opposition is based on a Utopian ideal that has no place in reality. It has more to do with the objection of purists who say – why should we make a rule that we might not like in the future – the fact is that there is lots of good to be accomplished now if we were to enact such a rule. It’s easy to get caught up in the what-if when we combine that with the very real challenge of actually crafting and enacting any term limit law.