I received some pushback when I endorsed term limits in an earlier post, so I did some research. There are a lot of advocates of term limits and a lot of reasons for their advocacy. My reason is simple: power corrupts and repeated election to office results in the accumulation of power, creating greater incentives for corruption. But my research revealed an interesting thing: term limits themselves don’t inhibit the concentration of power. Rather, power accumulates in different places – unelected political bosses and professional staffs. In addition, some rather perverse incentives are created for politicians serving their last term. I guess I’m changing my opinion from favoring term limits to being undecided – except for the Presidency.
The Presidency is a unique institution. Besides having awesome power, the President has an unusual set of incentives. A second term President has a strong incentive to build a legacy, to think and act with long term interests in mind. History will be his or her only judge. No one else in government has that same incentive, or at least not to the same degree. That’s why second term Presidents since FDR always drop in popularity. During a second term, we have long term governance and we are short term voters.
