Presidents should serve 6 year unlimited non-consecutive terms.

The house serves for two years. The president serves for four years. Senators serve for six years. There's a number of very good reasons the founding fathers set it up this way, and while I strongly agree that improvements can be made to the government this is not an improvement and not worth making. There are many many improvements we could make to the system, this one isn't an improvement and should not be utilized. We could easily make the president serve at the pleasure of the citizenry and not just the citizenry of the swing states every four years but the citizenry of the United States all the time. ---- Sure it's twelve years between elections but I prefer an elected official to do their job and in this case that would take another 6 years. 30 years if they serve three terms (though they will almost certainly be dead or senile by then although medical science is advancing in these regards). >>Yes it can which is why you would have the Presidential election during a year that we don't elect senators, that way none of them would get the presidential election year advantage. So your suggesting that we have elections every year for three years in a row? Every three years? S1 - 0 - S2 - P - S3 - 0, and always tuck the presidential election between a pair of senate elections. Guess what? That's an advantage too. As a senator being elected the year after a president you can *ALWAYS* run on issues of keeping him in check or helping him against the opposition. The first election after the presidential election (usually midterms two years into the four year term) are rather big and make a lot of waves. You're still synching up with the senate elections even are giving a year of buffer zone (at the cost of millions upon millions to the taxpayers, do you know how much additional elections cost?). >>For some reason my opponent thinks that an election every 4 years would be cheaper than an election every 6. Maybe elections are cheaper in bulk, maybe they're not, They are. We do house elections every even year and presidential elections every year divisible by four. Along with 1/3 of the senate every two years. We vote for these things on the same ballot and you're not suggesting that we move the presidential elections to odd years. That's not a fix to the syncing problem nor is it cheap. >>That is why I said that a president CAN be in office for 8 years in a row. FDR was elected for to serve for 16 years (he served 13) and he's one of the greatest presidents we've ever had! >>Enron fiasco happened... Enron? Those were the days. We thought one company lying up a storm and stealing pensions while the presidential buddy thereof sat around was the worst thing he could do. >>The president can't even write laws. Writing laws isn't leadership. Oddly this president does think he can write laws (signing statements). >>The Supreme Court recently overturned part of the Patriot Act. Overturning unconstitutional laws isn't leadership. >>And Congress can overturn a veto from the president, and pass the bill anyway. Getting 3/4ths of congress to override a veto isn't leadership. >>1. Allow a good president to be elected repeatedly. Why not repeal term limits. And, we already have that. If you'd like to be elected, serve one term, step aside and later serve another term you're completely allowed to do that. >>3. Prevent someone from staying in power for too long. If the electoral process functions correctly they would elected for as long as the people wanted them to serve. >>4. Allow the president to focus on running the country rather than trying to get reelected while running the country. I think a good portion of running the country is the ability not to be a complete screw up people want out of office. >>5. Let the people and business be able to plan ahead more accurately. Um. The accuracy of my plans do not revolve around who is president 10 years from now. >>6. Allow the people to see the long term results of any actions by a president before voting for them again. If those actions are clearly disastrous in the short term they still get to serve several additional years. Also, there's very little to the idea that seeing a plan work six years down the line characterizes a good president. I daresay a good president would see that a plan has been a disaster and move quickly to end it. Some ideas look good on paper and how they turn out half a dozen years down the road makes for very little insight into the effectiveness of a president. >>7. Help prevent presidents from starting wars just to stay in office. There's a considerable amount of dumb reasons to start wars but reelection is a new one to me. Bush was much hated for between the time he took office and September of that year when his approval ratings spiked to the high 90s. They then started to sink and were still at about 50% the 2004 election.