Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Six Year Term

I just finished watching the always anti-climactic State of the Union speech. It’s basically the end of the road for President Bush. And there is a looming recession. Then I thought, when else in my conscious, adult life have I seen a two term President end his term. Perhaps showing my youth, the only one that happened was President Clinton. There was a looming recession back then as well. The stock market slow down after the tech bubble burst was the major theme and focus for my Business Finance curriculum in college. Granted both of these happened in consecutive order. But combine this issue with the growing length of a campaign for the white house. Let’s face it, the 2008 election really began when the party nominations for the 2004 election were announced.

Is it possible that one issue we are seeing is that everyone is seeking a two-term role in the White House? The first term is guided by re-election concerns, the second term is guided by cleaning up the first term so that a strong legacy can be left. Why not one 6 year term. You get elected, then you seek to fulfill your mandate. No re-election worries, just outright pursuit of the policies and beliefs that you truly subscribe to.

How do we display judgment on our elected President? At each election of Congress, we either make his/her job easier or more difficult by providing him/her with co-operative co-workers, or congressional enemies.

It isn’t often that I subscribe to such a dramatic change from what the founding fathers established. After all, they established a union that consistently sees peaceful power shifts even after 230+ years of existence. Then again, I also don’t subscribe to the belief that our current generations are more intelligent than our ancestors. But it is hard to believe that they could have foreseen elections where the winner would spend hundreds of millions of dollars just to get elected to a job that pays a fraction of that sticker price.


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