Word: term
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Democracies as far back as ancient Greece and Rome have flirted with term limits; after all you don't want to hand an elected official the same lifetime power of potential tyranny you just stripped from Caesar or King Louis XVI. When American democracy was being formed, many of its founders, including Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, supported congressional term limits, "to prevent every danger which might arise to American freedom by continuing too long in office the members of the Continental Congress," as Jefferson wrote. (See why Washington is tied up in knots...
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's death shortly after being re-elected to a fourth term prompted Congress to quickly pass a constitutional amendment limiting the Commander in Chief to two terms. The amendment was ratified in 1951, but moves to limit congressional terms 40 years later were struck down in 1995 by the Supreme Court...
...20th century, movements had sprung up on the right and the left to set term limits and nearly every referendum on the issue passed by a 2-to-1 vote. "Term limits sever from time to time the natural comfortable tie between members and special interests in their district. They bring government closer to the people and improve citizen access to the process," says Philip Blumel, president of U.S. Term Limits, the largest advocacy group in the field. (See "Washington's Time for Bipartisanship: Retirement...
Currently 15 state legislatures and 36 governors are subject to term limits. "The experience in states, including California, has been negative: assembly members look to run for the state senate or Congress, Senators look for congressional seats, or lawmakers look out for cushy jobs in the private sector afterward, thus giving more power to the permanent staff. Bad idea," says Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and co-author of The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track...
Still, politicians should take the calls for term limits as a barometer of how unhappy the public is with the job they're doing. Once more, term limits has become a rallying cry from the Tea Party movement to dozens of state initiatives that will be on the ballot come November...