The New York Times reports that Mike Bloomberg may run for a third term as Mayor of New York City, thereby ending the current two-term limit. The Daily News and The New York Post support this (see links in the Times artice). I say: good. Term limits are undemocratic and insulting - designed, in effect, to keep people from making choices they think best, if their choice is to have a Mayor or President continue in office beyond the term limits.
I have mixed feelings about Bloomberg as a Mayor, and don't know if I would vote for him for a third or any term - but the principle that term limits are bad for democracy takes precedence.
Franklyn Delano Roosevelt served four terms as President - shortly after which, term limits for President, two terms, were put into our Constitution. I've long thought that that anti-democratic 22nd Amendment should be repealed.
The essence of the democracy is the citizens decide. Protecting people from their desires and analyses about who should be office, if that person has already served x number of terms, is counter-productive to having the best person in office, and, from the point of view of democracy, self defeating and not sane.
Bloomberg will need to get the City Council to do away with the term limits for Mayor. I hope they do the right, democratic thing.
5 comments:
the flip side of that coin is that politicians when adhering to term limits are more inclined to act on behalf of the best interest of the people- instead of the most popular course of action.
Career politicians I feel are just so ingrained in the system that they do not serve what is best for the people- but what is best for their next campaign- and they are often not the same thing.
True, Mike - but the front side of the coin is still anti-democratic and contemptuous of the American people ... which probably why the Founding Fathers did not have term limits in the Constitution...
I really don't care how many terms one stys in office. What I care about is that they can just void our vote. What's next, picking who they want for president instead of us voting? Heil Bloomberg.
Thanks for the comment, anon, but I don't follow your logic - what does doing away with term limits have to do with voiding our votes? Removing term limits seems just the opposite.
The only good reason I've heard for term limits are that they tend to suppress the creation of "machines." Of course, as we've seen recently in Russia, that hasn't stopped Putin.
In a similar vein, term limits are supposed to limit idea inbreeding and stagnation, bringing someone in with fresh ideas every couple of terms. If the people are happy with the stagnant ideas, or they just don't care one way or the other, should we force them to change?
It is still amazing to hear mainline libertarians pushing for term limits, which to me brands them as just "conservatives who like to get high," as Drew Carey labeled himself last week.
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