A recurrent complaint in government is the entrenched nature of elected office. Elect a candidate to office, particularly for a second term, and he/she is probably there for a very long time. The power of the incumbent is well known, and the concern about incumbents is that they tend to move away from their own consciences, away from the needs of the voters and , and into the orbit of the big money peddlers. Many state governments have therefore instituted laws that limit the length of time an official may serve. Efforts at implementing these controls in D.C., however, have uniformly failed, with the exception of the Commander-In-Chief; he/she is limited to two terms. Not everyone is so sanguine about this movement. There is a certain skill that goes into public policy. The philosopher Burke noted that government has a learning curve, and that this education has real value. Certainly neophyte congressmen and legislators need most of their first term just to learn the system; any real competency takes two or more terms. Louisiana is one of the states to have chosen to limit the years that elected officials may serve. This has caused a re-shuffling of anyone and everyone with long-term experience, and a lot of our hardest working representatives have lost elections, or have simply chosen to leave public service. So it appears that the only real experience left among the elected personnel, may be the UN-elected personnel, the bureaucrats and the hired representatives of special interest groups. Not exactly an improvement, that. But there is another problem facing our government today: increasingly acrimonious partisanship. We have reached a point where trying to win the game has become more important than the game itself; victory for one party or the other is more important than being American. We are so busy trying to win skirmishes over our differences, we ignore the overwhelming number of issues where most of us agree. I have an idea about how we might kill two birds with one stone: Extendible Limits. After a candidate has served the maximum years allowed by law, a vote of the governing body-- by private ballot-- in which he has served might allow him to stand for re-election: a simple majority would be required for the first post-limit election, and with each successive election bid an increasingly higher required majority would be required: 53%, 56%, etc. For the chief officer, perhaps the House and the Senate would both have to grant permission. This has some very positive outcomes. Backbiting is punished, cooperation is rewarded. Politicians have to decide if they want to play hardball and settle for a few quick wins and then leave; or if they wish to really work at governance, at collaboration, and at consensus-building. I suspect the best and the brightest will choose the latter. The deadwood, the dirtballs, will find themselves limited to a very few terms. They will exert very little influence on the system, and quickly leave. Only those elected officials who show true leadership, those who reach across the aisle, those who build consensus, those who focus on agreement, not acrimony-- those will be the people will move into increasing positions of power. And the number of their terms will directly correlate with the vision and skill they bring to the job.
Josh Skandar writes for booksXYZ.com, the non-profit bookstore listing over 3,000,000 books. His current recommendation is Inherit the Atchafalaya, a photographic and written introduction to the people and nature of Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin.
Title: An Approach to Politics & Partisanship Article Distribution and Free Web Content by www.reprint-content.com
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