One Term Limits

I’m nearly done A History of US Foreign Relations since 1776 and it paints a pretty disturbing picture of the driving forces in US foreign affairs. Frequently decisions are made with an eye to elections as opposed to the best policy. There is also nearly constant infighting amongst members of congress and the executive on foreign policy. The idea that by appointing top bureaucrats you get a bureaucracy that is easier to manage because the top bureaucrats share your objectives is a sham.

This got me thinking about term limits. Maybe two terms is too many. Maybe elected officials should be limited to only a single term. This would ensure that they spend their time doing the people’s business instead of having to worry about funding their re-election campaign. It would also make them less beholden to the special interest groups that bankrolled their campaign. It could mitigate against the advantage of incumbency in politics. The biggest advantage however would be that decisions would not be made with an eye to re-election. This might require a change in the electoral system, to perhaps give longer terms to members of the house, but then again if they were able to spend their full two years legislating, instead spending one year out of two doing fund raising, the idea seems worthwhile. There must be more than 1200 competent legislators in America at any one time!

The only concern I really have here is that without the threat of being thrown out of office, there is little incentive to fulfill the will of the people. I suppose that’s a fair argument, but for the most part I find average voters uninformed and or misguided so I don’t see that as much of an issue. When I see The Economist instead of Vogue at the supermarket checkout, maybe I’ll reassess that point of view.