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Originally Posted by smooth
But I don't agree that we shouldn't have more than one term. Although, at first glance, the argument that presidents should not spend too much time campaigning is persuasive, I think the second re-election campaign has an important function:
how do we know when the US public supports the policies it's president is implementing? While I may disagree with them, the majority of the voting public may actually support what the current president is doing. Even if kerry took office at the end of an 8 year bush presidency (for example), he ought to continue with the policies that the majority of the voting public supported--just like bush should have done with clinton's popular policies.
it makes no sense, in regards to the long-term health and political environemnt of the nation, to whip one's constituency into a frenzy for the first couple of years and dismantle everything the prior president did.
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There are a number of reasons this is likely to be less of a concern than you imagine. For one, it addresses two major problems with a two-term Presidency:
1- The last year of the first term is spent almost exclusively on campaigning. This serves only one purpose: to get re-elected. It is a huge waste of time for the country.
2- The effects of the first term do not necessarily drive the acts of the second. During the first term, a President must be far more concientious of public opinion precisely because he must achieve a second term. The second term is, in essence, a free reign. Recall regulations would act as the impetus to listen to the citizens during the single term scenario. There is nothing in a second term which has that power.
As for continuing on the path laid out by the voting public - this is still easily achieved by whomever of the next set of candidates more closely matches the beloved, exiting President. Of course, in both cases (the existing and this scenario), the likelyhood that a new President will follow similar policies to the previous one is not anything close to a guarantee or even something I have seen much evidence of (though, it would depend on how fine a method of measuring policy differences you use).