This House opposes term limits for elected Heads of State

Sorry it took so long – I’m currently in a funny part of Europe with little access to the Internet, so I’d appreciate it if he could post his R2 as late as possible (I get back to the UK, and proper internet access, late tomorrow). Substantive I: Experienced hands steady the ship There have been many instances of national crisis where an existing candidate could be perceived as being a better option for the future of the country than any of their challengers, yet that candidate could also be forced to stand aside by an arbitrary and needless term limit. An important example of a candidate who was not constrained in this way would be Gordon Brown, the UK’s Prime Minister between 2007 and 2010. In late 2007 and early 2008, amidst falling poll ratings, Brown’s future looked poor and his Conservative challenger David Cameron was making major political ground. Everything changed (albeit temporarily) when the world’s economy started to slump. The people suddenly turned to Brown, who had previously been described by Vince Cable as having gone from “Stalin to Mr Bean”, as an experienced set of hands (having been Chancellor for ten years), and Brown overtook Cameron in the polls. Ultimately, of course, Brown was not re-elected due to various other government scandals and incompetences, but had the election been held in 2008 (as was speculated) he might well have been elected. This seems an obscure and bizarre example of someone who wasn’t even affected by a term limit, but there is a point here: in times of national crisis, people often look to experienced hands for leadership. Term limits mean that an experienced leader who has years of expertise in, for example, economic management, is barred from continuing in the job even when it is seen as in the ultimate national interest. There are times when the people do not want to trust some young, punky upstart with national leadership; be it in times of economic crisis, war, or natural disaster. Some leaders are natural experts in a particular field: many would argue that Brown was one of the most skilled economists Britain had seen in decades, and many argue that certain presidents of the USA excelled in reforming or managing within a particular sphere. Therefore, there is no real reason to stop them from serving their country by providing and using their expertise; and my point here is that actively barring an experienced candidate can, in some situations, be to national detriment and not to the overall benefit of the nation. Substantive II: They are a complete anomaly within a free electoral system Democracy is, unsurprisingly, a very fair political system that allows people to make many of their own choices with regards to how people vote. We allow people to vote for radical candidates, even if they threaten to destroy the fabric of democracy and civilised government itself. Yet, for some reason, many political systems forbid people from re-electing a perfectly decent candidate who has been good for the country? Whilst in a country such as the USA, where the political atmosphere is incredibly polarised and divided and supporters of one party are constantly calling for the President to be impeached simply on the grounds of having enacted legislation they disagree with, it is difficult to imagine a President who everybody agreed upon, suppose one were to come along. That would be a President who had truly united the country through leadership despite the presence of major national crises. Why would you not want to re-elect him (or indeed her)? My point here is that this is a lack of freedom which is bizarre at best and harmful at worst. It almost appears not to trust the people to like their own President by insisting that a new one be elected at least every 8 years (using the USA as a case study, although the point would be valid for many other nations). A crazy right-wing madman promising a nuclear missile in every home and the death penalty for anyone caught with a cat in their home is allowed to run for the Presidency, quite rightly, yet a more ‘sane’ President (I trust nobody on DDO would vote for the aforementioned madman, and if they would, they should report to an asylum) is forced to stand down. Either democracy is democracy – where anyone born anywhere within a particular jurisdiction, regardless of occupation, can become the leader through election – or we might as well dump democracy as a system. Term limits are an example of misexecuted democracy, as they are a complete anomaly within its principles. Substantive III: When it’s time to go, people generally do I’ll be using the UK as my case study for this argument, being a Western democracy which has always operated without term limits and where there is no real convention on how long a Prime Minister should serve. In the UK, when the people are bored of a particular PM, the system tends to get rid of them fairly quickly. This goes to serve that term limits aren’t needed in order to stop an unpopular second-term candidate from serving again. Two prominent examples within the UK would be Margaret Thatcher (resigned 1990) and Tony Blair (stood down 2007). Thatcher won a third term in office in 1987, but a series of ill political decisions in 1989 and 1990 led to a string of prominent ministers resigning and her poll ratings started to plummet. Events such as 1990’s infamous Poll Tax Riots showed the public’s contempt for an extremely controversial and increasingly unpopular Prime Minister. Thatcher wanted to continue but her party, fearing its electoral prospects and wishing to secure a fourth term in government, forced her out. The point? When Thatcher became unpopular, she went (though not necessarily by choice). As for Blair, whose popularity went down in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq (he was re-elected in 2005 with the lowest ever percentage of the vote for a PM winning a Parliamentary majority), he was forced out by the senior members of his party in favour of Brown in 2007. Therefore, if we look at the UK system, we can see that we don’t need an arbitrary term limit to stop a politican serving beyond their welcome. Parties ultimately value government more than leadership, be it in the UK or in the USA. So if we’ve proved that term limits aren’t needed to prevent leaders from outstaying their welcome, and we’ve also shown that term limits are a detriment to democracy, Pro has therefore proved that there is a strong case against term limits. That’s all for now, though I will introduce more substantives in R3. I’ve been light on sources this round due to limited internet access (I’m on a metered connection), so I will cite more in R3. Over to RocketEngineer now for his opening arguments.