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points by anonymous908213 4 days ago | 0 comments

> Presidency, like other elected positions, should not be a career.

As stated, this is merely a truism, and you have not justified this belief. Would you care to? It seems very irrational to me. High office is one of the most difficult and most impactful jobs in the world. It's easy to do a terrible job and screw everyone over while enriching yourself, of course, but extremely challenging to do a good job. You are responsible for the fate of tens or hundreds of millions of people, and must exercise incredible judgment on the breadth of every macro problem society faces while simultaneously maneuvering both internal support and foreign relations. Why would we not want to make this most important of all jobs a job where people can actually grow into the role and demonstrate expertise in it? You are strictly only eliminating the electorate's options. There is already a corrective mechanism for voters to evict someone doing a bad job [whether they choose to exercise it is another matter, but that's literally democracy in action], but there should be no mechanism to sustain a job well done?

[–] stickfigure 4 days ago

The skill to win elections and the skill to govern are not the same. And humans have biases against change. Term limits guarantee the downside is limited and they are healthy for a real democracy.

Also... too long in power makes it easier to dismantle the democratic process.

The entire American system of checks and balances is not designed to get optimal leadership, it is designed to limit damage from bad leadership.

[–] senderista 4 days ago

> The entire American system of checks and balances is not designed to get optimal leadership, it is designed to limit damage from bad leadership.

Well how's that working out? There's a reason the rest of the developed democratic world hasn't adopted a strong executive.

[–] ckdarby 4 days ago

American system maintained being a super power for 80 years, great stability and giant prosperity.

Worked out very well for the American system till recently.

[–] senderista 4 days ago

I think that's just because both parties managed to keep demagogues from being nominated until 2016.

[–] stickfigure 3 days ago

I agree with you, the system is far from perfect. But right now we're talking about the benefits of term limits and it is greatly comforting that no matter what, in two more years Trump will be gone.

[–] ngcazz 4 days ago

I mean, US foreign policy been supercharged with Trump, and from that perspective his leadership's been plenty adequate. Declaring war on Iran in particular has long been a neoliberal aspiration that no one had the political courage to implement - enter Trump, the nominal adversary on whom they could outsource their ambitions, and whose blunders could cynically be disavowed.

[–] senderista 3 days ago

The neocons at The Bulwark are secretly rejoicing about the war with Iran.

[–] lopis 4 days ago

> And humans have biases against change

Funnily enough, a lot of people who voted for Flávio only did it because they wanted a change from Lula.

[–] anonymous908213 4 days ago

> The skill to win elections and the skill to govern are not the same.

Then elect someone else next time. This, however, is a criticism of democracy more than it is a justification for term limits.

> The entire American system of checks and balances is not designed to get optimal leadership, it is designed to limit damage from bad leadership.

How's that working out for you? You got Trump and Biden as a direct result of term limits. The way I see it, your system has selected for the maximally damaging bad leadership possible.

[–] jcranmer 4 days ago

> You got Trump and Biden as a direct result of term limits.

The US only enacted term limits in 1951. Before that time, only two presidents had attempted to seek third terms (another two attempted but failed to secure even a nomination by a political party), and only one was successful.

And, quite frankly, the only president since the 22nd amendment who I could see wanting to run for a third term is Trump, who does seem to be campaigning for one anyways despite being constitutionally barred from it.

[–] solyin 4 days ago

The writing is that no one can serve as president for longer than ten years, not that someone couldn't run a third term. A traditional reading means that you wouldn't seek a third term, but tradition'a been thrown out the window.

[–] jcranmer 4 days ago

In the interests of pedantry, that's not what the writing says. The operative text is quoted here:

> 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.

The 'obvious loophole' is that the text doesn't constrain the number of terms anyone can serve, but instead constrains the number of times someone can be elected as president, so if you run as vice president for someone who agrees to immediately resign to let you be president, you technically don't run afoul of the rule.

(The more likely loophole, following from Trump v Colorado, is that nobody is actually allowed to declare somebody ineligible for president, so the constitution's strictures are meaningless in practice. It truly is a disgusting SCOTUS decision.)

[–] NetMageSCW 3 days ago

The second part says you can only be elected once in that case, so you do “run afoul of the rule”.

[–] jcranmer 3 days ago

The argument would be that you were elected to the office of Vice President rather than the office of President.

[–] flamedoge 4 days ago

hardly the worst leaderships. Would you rather have Mao/Stalin/Putin?

[–] 9935c101ab17a66 1 day ago

You shouldn’t complain about truisms (is the quoted text even a truism? It doesn’t seem obviously true) that lack proper justification beyond belief when your initial premise was “an elected leader is the most competent person for the job”.

Beyond the obvious differences between campaigning and actually leading effectively, there is the very obvious looming spectre of dictatorship. So many dictatorships in the our modern history have started off with promising leaders affecting real change. That is, until they decide they like power a bit too much and start dismantling the democratic machinery that they used to take power in the first place.

You also assert that term limits are bad because it doesn’t allow time for people to grow into the role and demonstrate expertise in it. To that I say: there are other ways to lead and grow and develop expertise than the most powerful political office in any country.

I mean, we have an obvious and irrefutable real life example of what can happen without term limits. Just look at the US senate, the house and the Supreme Court. All of the political bodies are or have been littered without of touch career politicians who spend all their time ensuring no one else can challenge them, enriching themselves and their top supporters.