Tophat665

I'm with Halx on this one. If you have come to this country and want to run it, your age vis the age requirement for the presidency (and any other age restricted office, for that matter) should be calculated from the day you got your citizenship.

As for term limits, I really don't think they're as good an idea as people make them out to be. Yes, they prevent complete tyrants from running the country for more that 8 years, but, if we vote them in, is that really a good thing? On the other hand, it also prevents people who have the talent and experience from being elected again. Bill Clinton, protestations from the conservative fringe notwithstanding, was the greatest president of my lifetime; certainly the greatest Republican president since Lincoln. (Sit down. Reagan was a jackass who was in the right place at the right time. Take the cold war away, and he's just another gladhander paying off his campaign contributors.) If he could have run again, we would not be saddled with our current plummeting position in the global community, and would probably still be enjoying a budget surplus.

But let's not make this a referendum about Clinton. He's my favorite, but that doesn't mean he's the only one in this position. Just the only one I can think of.

Now, back to Washington: "8 years should be enough for any man" was informed by two things:

1) The job of president is frickin' hard. Good presidents work 18 hour days, with maybe a couple of weeks off a year (lousy presidents spend an awful lot of time at their ranch). You could watch Clinton aging in office well beyond what would be expected for the time spent. Reagan, of course, slipped right into his dotage early in his second term. Three and a half terms killed FDR. Bush I went from mature to old in 4 years. It's a tough job that more than 8 years of may well kill you.

2) People wanted to make him king. Monarchy was in the air at the time. It was the prevailing myth of sovreignty, just as the will of the people is today. He wanted to avoid all of that, and I thank him for it. It took 140 years before someone bucked the custom, and by the end of FDR's life the world was a different place entirely than when Washington stepped down, and America's place in it had been turned upside down.

I honestly don't believe that we need to worry about this sort of thing. One way or another a president's term is limited - either the voters or death will remove him from office eventually. Seeing the damage Bush as done to this country in four years makes me believe that the length of time spent in office is largely immaterial. Could we term limit the real jackasses to two years but let the really good ones go as long as their health will allow? I don't think so, and intelligent people will disagree on which are which.

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