WaPost: End presidential term limits

That is really a bad move, suppose we got a president that hides his past, lies so elequently, talks a good line of BS, doubles the debt, couldnt operate a hot dog stand by wrigley field, twists the wording of 235 year old documents and hangs with hardcore socialist constantly. What could happen? oh, wait, this sounds somewhat familiar.... 2 terms, thats it, go the he** away, all I hear from this lapos is lies and lies.....

Bassago
reply to post by intrepid

 

Ted Kennedy must have been the exception that proved the rule.

Good old Ted, what a... ? Yeah, I don't even have a word for him. If there WAS anything he was supposed to prove to us it was the senators can kill people, leave the scene of the crime and not be held accountable.

He is only one of the exceptions though. Feinstein is another.

edit on 025pm1616pm52013 by Bassago because: (no reason given)

Or you could sell arms to Iran through your underlings, have THEM take the fall THEN bail them all out of prison when you get elected a couple months later...Oh and Dad helped out HITLER. They are all evil.

Almost every Congress introduces legislation to repeal the 22nd amendment. The last time was in 2009 and there are people from both sides that offer it up.

Even Harry Reid has introduced legislation to repeal it and if I recall, it was during Bush's term. This legislation rarely gets out of committee however but its an ongoing thing for many politicians and the reasons vary as to why.

Now if you go back to the Convention when the Founders proposed a term limit you will see, according to the notes, that a 1-year term of seven years was put forth and adopted and no one objected to it. This was decided pretty early on in the presidential debate and there was really not even a discussion about it.

Towards the end of the Convention before they sent out the document for ratification, this provision was mysteriously dropped and there's not a note about why. Someone took it out but no notes were taken of any discussion regarding the change.

To this day we don't know why it was changed. Many theories but its all speculation.

James1982
The opposite direction really needs to be taken, yearly votes where it's incredibly easy to recall a president. If they want to stay in office longer than a year, they better make some real and obvious changes to their behavior. But then again America elected Bush twice, and elected Obama twice, it's pretty obvious the criminals are excellent at swaying votes of ignorant majority.

I find your perspective very interesting. Maybe that could work better. However, IDK if yearly elections would be too much. A lot of people are lazy. Might decrease voter turnout. Plus, I get sick of hearing the increase in partisan BS in election years. Would every year be like that, or you think they'd tone it down, if it happened more often?


Still not sure I trust the idea of no term limits. One corrupt enough guy could stack the deck so he never leaves office, no?


Maybe we could have elections every 2 years, with an overall limit of 5 or 6 terms. Or maybe, running with your idea of making it easy to pull out a bad president, we could have a law where the first 6 or 12 months in the offices is "probationary," at the end of which, if there was enough dissatisfaction among the public, he/she could be voted out of office, by the people.

Viesczy
And again Obammy is GWB with a TAN. Why the Right hates hm is beyond me as he's done everything that TPTB wanted... continued the war, continued corporate welfare... just don't get it.

LMAO Very nice.

reply to post by Spookybelle

Towards the end of the Convention before they sent out the document for ratification, this provision was mysteriously dropped and there's not a note about why. Someone took it out but no notes were taken of any discussion regarding the change.

And interesting it wasn't until FDR that any president actually tried to run for a third term which resulted in the 22nd amendment in the first place. Not quite sure what to make of that.

To be fair WWII was pretty extreme and may indeed have been a valid reason to keep a sitting president beyond a second term. Or maybe not.

Bassago

Personally I don't think it really matters much anymore considering the sham two party system we have.

I hope the rest of the voters don't have the same attitude because that is the pits. The mentality of 'it don't matter so we'll just keep the bad juju that happens to be currently in power since it's what's in place at the moment' is pretty damn bad. It does matter and I don't give a damn how we prove it but we need to do what needs to be done. This game is NOT over!

Problem is that terms are too long. They should have a vote every 2 years whether to keep the president or not. If not, then there would be a new election. Max would be 8 years. A lot of countries does it this way, not sure why the US doesn't.

reply to post by Bassago


Not a chance. If there is anything this country needs is more, shorter term limits.

If people have any integrity all, ANY people, ANY integrity, let the WA Post know this is not okay, then kill your subscription. This is the wrong we have all been seeing and for the people's sake, please act to stop it. This may be our last chance to keep what's left of the constitution intact. Not only that, but what's left of the meager backbone of the citizens of this once great country.

Do we really want to kill our own people? Do we want to kill our ideas, our principals? I'm not talking about the idiots who rule this country but the people who live it, you and I.

FDR brought the country out of the depression and was a real hero to working people. They would have re-elected him forever. The republicans couldn't stand it and passed the amendment to the constitution. They later regretted it with Reagan.

Nah we need term limits on every elected position. It's a bigger check and balance. It prevents one thing from being carried too far in the long run.

There will be no change to the federal law on term limits of the president. The next thing they will say is that Obama will declare martial law and suspend elections. If Cheney didn't do it, it ain't gonna happen.

Are these people mad? With a big enough politic machine and state prisoners in red states a president could stay in the White House for life. The jail gerrymandering only makes this situation worst, because the US has one of the biggest prison population in the world. Just send prisoners to conservative states and you can stay in office if name ends with D.

I'm a libertarian myself, but no party should have that much sway.

reply to post by thewholetruth


So wouldn't outlawing gerrymandering by requiring a bi partisan committee to draw the boundaries make sense?

damwel
reply to post by thewholetruth

 

So wouldn't outlawing gerrymandering by requiring a bi partisan committee to draw the boundaries make sense?

Harry Reid use the Nuclear option which means no discussion or filibustering, which ultimately means no bipartisan cooperation.

Like Nancy Pelosi says they just pass laws to find out what in them. Hopefully 2 terms will stay the max.

When Ronald Reagan was serving his second term, some Republicans briefly floated the idea of removing term limits so he could run again. It's not a good idea to take away the term limits, especially the way our crooks in government have it set up but let's be honest here. Many republicans have in the past and would vote now to take away the term limits if it suited their needs. This is just a way for them to further divide us. Don't drink the coolaid.

Nancy Pelosi is an idiot. Harry Reid invoked the nuclear option because the republicans will not let the government function. There have been more republican filibusters in the Senate in Obamas term then in the entire history of the United States. The obstruction has to be stopped somehow.

You can't fault Obama when he can't do anything. The ACA was handcrafted by the heritage foundation. It didn't have the most important thing which was a 1 payer system. How can the republicans be so against it when the democrats let them fashion the thing? The ACA is the only thing Obama has been able to pass in 5 years in office.

reply to post by Bassago


They really need to institute term limits on congress. A good number of congressional members are over the age of retirement and becoming senile. A majority of them have been in office for 20 years or more!

reply to post by StoutBroux

I hope the rest of the voters don't have the same attitude because that is the pits. The mentality of 'it don't matter so we'll just keep the bad juju that happens to be currently in power since it's what's in place at the moment' is pretty damn bad. It does matter and I don't give a damn how we prove it but we need to do what needs to be done. This game is NOT over!

Maybe so but I've found that participating in a rigged game is usually a futile effort. With the current stranglehold the dems / reps have on America supported by their big money enablers there is little hope that voting in either of those groups is of any positive benefit.

You're correct that something needs to be done. I believe that will require a very hard reset and a SHTF scenario, which we may well get sooner vs later. That's what my focus is centered on, not the fake political puppet games.

reply to post by Bassago


I think removing term limits for the president was in the works the minute the Dem's knew they were in weather it be Obama or Hillary.

These people have the perfect campaign speech, all they have to do is just keep repeating it.

To all American people that want amnesty, food stamps, welfare, cellphones, disability from not being able to get a job and anything else the government provides you "FREE" then you need to vote for Obama. This along with the people that would vote for him no matter what and you should see my point.

This is what we have become as a nation, its not hard to understand if you can deal with it.

Like I asked before, did you really think America would dodge the socialist third world bullet ?

What needs changing is Presidential Pardons.
That's a load of crap to be able to get friends out of prison when you leave office.
End that so people might know they'll have to stay in prison until their term is up.
Let's get rid of executive orders and signing statements while we're at it.
Then all of Congress would be a start.

Can you enlighten me on what is the socialist third world bullet?

Asktheanimals: wouldn't a line item veto be great to eliminate pork as well?