Comment by anonymous908213
7 hours ago
> 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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
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hardly the worst leaderships. Would you rather have Mao/Stalin/Putin?
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