Should presidents be term limited to one term?

[Make America Grumpy Again]

In some ways it could help to diffuse claims of election fraud and corruption, but I don't have a problem with the two-term precedent at least as it stands.

[dead0man]

No, and they probably shouldn't be limited to two either.  Imagine if Obama had been President during Covid!  I get that it's kind of to protect us from ourselves, but it seems to have done more harm than good.

[Damocles]

The 22nd was only implemented because business interests reeling from losses in the World War II era wanted to prevent another FDR from ever happening again.

[Pericles]

No, and they probably shouldn't be limited to two either.  Imagine if Obama had been President during Covid!  I get that it's kind of to protect us from ourselves, but it seems to have done more harm than good.

Term limits are undemocratic, whether a politician has been in office too long should be the choice of the voters only and not some arbitrary law.

[Sir Mohamed]

Nah, I'm not a fan of that idea. I'd prefer to change the 22nd Amendment only limit the presidency to 2 consecutive terms and partial terms not counted at all.

If there's a one-term limit, I prefer the South Korean model of 5 years. 4 years is definitely too short, but 6 years as in Mexico or the Phillipines is too long, imho. And the term limit shouldn't absolute / for life. Just for immediate successive terms.

What in addition creates a problem is how to deal with incomplete terms? Are succeeding VPs allowed to run for a full term or not? Sure, you could do a snap election with a caretaker leading the govt in the meantime, but that would change the original schedule and kind of conflict with congressional elections. Would be better to hold an entire national election with the legislative branch elected to the same term as the prez.

[West_Midlander]

Nah, I'm not a fan of that idea. I'd prefer to change the 22nd Amendment only limit the presidency to 2 consecutive terms and partial terms not counted at all.

If there's a one-term limit, I prefer the South Korean model of 5 years. 4 years is definitely too short, but 6 years as in Mexico or the Phillipines is too long, imho. And the term limit shouldn't absolute / for life. Just for immediate successive terms.

What in addition creates a problem is how to deal with incomplete terms? Are succeeding VPs allowed to run for a full term or not? Sure, you could do a snap election with a caretaker leading the govt in the meantime, but that would change the original schedule and kind of conflict with congressional elections. Would be better to hold an entire national election with the legislative branch elected to the same term as the prez.

Since under the 22nd Amendment, you can only run for 1 term if you served >2 years of someone else's term, presumably those who served more than 2/2.5/3 years (depending on if the sole term is 4, 5, or 6 years) of someone else's term would be ineligible to run for a full term.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Nah, I'm not a fan of that idea. I'd prefer to change the 22nd Amendment only limit the presidency to 2 consecutive terms and partial terms not counted at all.

If there's a one-term limit, I prefer the South Korean model of 5 years. 4 years is definitely too short, but 6 years as in Mexico or the Phillipines is too long, imho. And the term limit shouldn't absolute / for life. Just for immediate successive terms.

What in addition creates a problem is how to deal with incomplete terms? Are succeeding VPs allowed to run for a full term or not? Sure, you could do a snap election with a caretaker leading the govt in the meantime, but that would change the original schedule and kind of conflict with congressional elections. Would be better to hold an entire national election with the legislative branch elected to the same term as the prez.

Since under the 22nd Amendment, you can only run for 1 term if you served >2 years of someone else's term, presumably those who served more than 2/2.5/3 years (depending on if the sole term is 4, 5, or 6 years) of someone else's term would be ineligible to run for a full term.

That's precisely how it works in the Philippines, I think.

[Meclazine for Israel]

If they are over 70, yes.

[Schiff for Senate]

No, and they probably shouldn't be limited to two either.  Imagine if Obama had been President during Covid!  I get that it's kind of to protect us from ourselves, but it seems to have done more harm than good.

Term limits are undemocratic, whether a politician has been in office too long should be the choice of the voters only and not some arbitrary law.

Agreed. I do think the term limits most states have for governor - no more than two consecutive terms - are not necessarily a bad idea, but two terms lifetime (the term limit for US presidents and the governors of some states, including CA) is already bad enough.

[Schiff for Senate]

If they are over 70, yes.

Why? If you genuinely have a competent, healthy and effective president who's, say, 75, let the voters reelect him. Let the voters judge for themselves if the president is too old or not healthy enough to serve. These arbitrary barriers shouldn't apply. Yes, I agree that most of the time, it's not good for us to have a president over 70, but if we want to replace him, we can do that by voting him out, rather than by having it be legally required. Because then if we do end up with a great president who happens to be over 70 years old, we'll already have precluded ourselves from reelecting ourselves. Like say with Biden. If he proves to be a great president who's healthy and can serve another four years, we should be allowed to reelect him in 2024. We don't want to, we won't. But we don't need a one-size-fits all blanket law outright banning us from reelecting him because he's over 70. It's undemocratic and it basically stops people from deciding for themselves who they want to have as their leaders (the same can be said of most term limits, including the current term limit limiting presidents to 2 terms - if we have a great president who we want to reelect to a third term, we should be allowed to reelect him; we should be allowed to decide for ourselves if we want to go with Washington's precedent or reelect a 2-term president instead of having the former forced upon us and us not really having that choice).

[Meclazine for Israel]

If they are over 70, yes.

Why? If you genuinely have a competent, healthy and effective president who's, say, 75, let the voters reelect him.

Trump, Biden and Putin are all essentially ineffective at running a fish n chip shop.

I was talking to a Croatian woman the other day, and she said three or four generations ago, when a family in Yugoslavia had grandad starting to degenerate like Biden and needing hospital style care to survive, they would take him 15km out into the forest late at night and leave him there.

Anyway, they would know they were going to die, and plead for their life. One of her relatives up the chain pleaded that he did not want to be left in the same forest that he himself left his dad 33 years earlier, so they took him home and survived.

We just have these men barely capable of looking after themself running the world's largest countries.

[Schiff for Senate]

If they are over 70, yes.

Why? If you genuinely have a competent, healthy and effective president who's, say, 75, let the voters reelect him.

Trump, Biden and Putin are all essentially ineffective at running a fish n chip shop.

I was talking to a Croatian woman the other day, and she said three or four generations ago, when a family in Yugoslavia had grandad starting to degenerate like Biden and needing hospital style care to survive, they would take him 15km out into the forest late at night and leave him there.

Anyway, they would know they were going to die, and plead for their life. One of her relatives up the chain pleaded that he did not want to be left in the same forest that he himself left his dad 33 years earlier, so they took him home and survived.

We just have these men barely capable of looking after themself running the world's largest countries.

I’m not denying that, but we have the power to vote ‘em out if we want to. I mean I do hope that 2024 features neither Biden or Trump in the GE, because I do agree, we really don’t need two very old guys on the ballot again. Time for newer blood - I like the speculation of a Newsom vs DeathSantis race in 2024.

[satsuma]

I support the current term limit because incumbents can be so entrenched that they could become unaccountable, making elections unfair. The people have difficulty even imagining a different president as the incumbent becomes synonymous with the role, regardless of their actual abilities. As a corollary, it's legitimate to stage a coup over term limit violation since that's rarely the incumbent's only crime, but is very obvious when it happens.

[MarkD]

The opposite; we should repeal the two-term limit we already have in the 22nd Amendment. We should allow a 35-year-old to get elected and reelected and reelected for as often as the voters will tolerate her or him, even if that's for 52 years, until they retire at 87 years old.

[All Along The Watchtower]

I'm not exactly a fan of term limits for elected officials, but then again I think FDR was one of our best Presidents, so I'm not a fan of efforts to prevent people like him remaining in office if the voters want them there.

[Lechasseur]

Yes

Not on principle, but simply because US presidents tend to be awful and thus shouldn't serve more than one term

[Ferguson97]

No. Allowing them to run for re-election gives them incentive to keep good on their promises.

[John Dule]

No, and I like the current system. Letting someone serve for longer than Washington was a one-time blemish on our nation that will hopefully never be repeated.

[Schiff for Senate]

The opposite; we should repeal the two-term limit we already have in the 22nd Amendment. We should allow a 35-year-old to get elected and reelected and reelected for as often as the voters will tolerate her or him, even if that's for 52 years, until they retire at 87 years old.

Agreed.

[kyc0705]

No, but this is part of a broader question that I have varying (though maybe not that conflicted, now that I think about it) thoughts on.

This is more a note on presidential term limits in general than the original question, but I want to say that the American presidency is a sufficiently visible and powerful position that it should be subject to some external limit on how much one person can become entrenched in it. But I don't want to give that as my sole argument, because I'm not sure if this is a belief that I've really worked through to arrive at, or it's just a more immediate instinct that lacks basis: after all, can we really say that the two-term limit has done anything to affect the growth of the presidency? And, as been pointed out upthread, that kind of rationalizing isn't actually why the current two-term limit was added after FDR.

In any case, I agree with those who have said that if there was a single-term limit, four years would be too short.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

You're not supposed to say "term" twice in one sentence.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

One 6 year term, yes.