Term Limits for Public Servants: Good or Bad?

WARNING: Do not break the law before, during, or after reading anything I mention.


Term limits curtail the rights of citizens. It would be an unfortunate error to have virtuous public servants representing us and not be able to re-elect them, indefinitely, if they were sufficiently capable of discharging constituent interests. As a matter of fact, the Office of the Presidency has been unduly diminished by the Twenty-Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, setting up any two-term President as a "lame duck," a possibly dangerous prospect leading to ineptness or brazen actions, like pardons, due to no future accountability to the electorate. American citizens are the only ones who wound foul around here. Why should it automatically be the case that ANY and ALL citizens that enter the office, duly elected by fellow citizens, be prohibited from running for a third, fourth, fifth term? Would patriotic citizens keep electing a tyrant for life?


Opponents to such an idea suggest that Franklin D. Roosevelt's four-term Presidency dangerously approached the separation of powers doctrine. That led to the eventual adoption of the Twenty-Second Amendment, although it did not restrict Harry S. Truman's ability to seek subsequent terms. It should also be noted that FDR's seemingly diminished capacity entering the final term was also a concern. That scenario could not happen again given the perpetual media frenzy associated with high office. Few have suggested that Ronald W. Reagan was somewhat diminished during his last term. Some may even counter-factually speculate that if the Twenty-Second Amendment was not enacted, Ronald W. Reagan may have been elected to a third-term, at least. Along the same line of speculation, William J. Clinton could have been our current President.

I am not suggesting that FDR, Reagan, or Clinton were virtuous public servants, but the point is that if citizens are lucky enough to have a virtuous public servant, we should be the ones who get to determine who and how long they serve at our pleasure. We are proprietors of government, shareholders if you will, having ownership rights over this societal corporation, chartered by our ancestors over two-hundred years earlier, called a Constitutional Republic, different from a democracy; the former is composed of citizens represented by special citizens that are elected to serve at the pleasure of their constituents and enact legislation. In a democracy, the constitution is the will of a majority faction, expressed by legislation enacted by themselves, personally. In California for example, they have a referendum, lessening the republican form of the system, causing the people at large to change the laws more easily. One major problem with this lesser republican form is that laws come and go quickly, like our inner most passions, providing consternation and confusion, and no rational consistency. One year you have a law, the next year no law, the following year, well, you get the point. Term-limits are bad when they involve virtuous servants. Term-limits already exist at the ballot box for servants who breach their duties, therefore term-limits in any other form are useless limitations on our liberties as citizens of the United States of America.