Needed: A Different Sort of President

[4est_4est_Gump]

Needed: A Different Sort of President
Charismatic career politicians don’t make the best commanders-in-chief.
Victor Davis Hanson, NRO
NOVEMBER 7, 2013

The second terms of the latest three presidents have not been successful. Bill Clinton was impeached after his infamous lie to Americans, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

George W. Bush was blamed for the postwar violence in Iraq.

Barack Obama’s scandals — with his accompanying “limited hangout” denials — are ruining his second term: the growing IRS messes, the Associated Press monitoring, the NSA embarrassments, the Benghazi killings, the Syria bluster and backdown, and, of course, the Obamacare fiasco and the misleading statements about it.

What are other common denominators of this collective tenure of our recent presidents?

After popular first terms and reelection, they seemed to have lost public confidence and the ability to continue an agenda.

Do two terms wear out a president?

Maybe the hubris of getting reelected convinces our commanders-in-chief that they are mostly beyond reproach. Overreach ensues. Then the goddess Nemesis descends in destructive fashion to remind them that they are mere mortals.

In addition, the more talented cabinet and staff appointees often bail out near the end of the first term. At best, they burn out from continuous 16-hour work days. At worst, they flee to leverage their former high-profile jobs through revolving-door influence-peddling, finding new work in media, lobbying, consulting, and on Wall Street.

Boredom, on the part of both the president and the public, takes its toll. Clinton was an effective speaker — at first. Near the end of his eight years, the public’s eyes rolled when he predictably misled, exaggerated, or became petulant.

Bush was witty and sincere in repartee and impromptu speaking but often stumbled over the teleprompter. By the end of his eight years, his critics were publishing books of Bush malapropisms.

It is hard now to believe that Obama’s banal “hope and change” ever set a nation on fire. Certainly by 2013, we have come to snore when Obama for the nth time laces his teleprompted rhetoric with “make no mistake about it” or “let me be perfectly clear.”

One-term presidencies — or a constitutional change to a single six-year presidential term — make better sense. A single presidential tenure might curtail an incumbent’s customary exaggerations about supposed past achievements and the phony promises about great things to come that are apparently necessary for reelection. Much of wasteful federal spending and general bad policy derives from the reelection efforts of an incumbent desperate to appease or buy off the electorate.

Interesting Idea.

I think the math works better with a seven-year term to ensure that every other election is not tied to Congressional elections. Maybe an alternating six and seven to ensure only off-year elections so that the whole focus is on the office and not the coat-tails...

 

[miles]

You just violated the new kindler, gentler Literotica meme. We aren't supposed to mention Obama, the Presidency, Liberalism, or Democrats.

This is going on your permanent record and will follow you the rest of your life.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

You just violated the new kindler, gentler Lterotica meme. We aren't supposed to mention Obama, the Presidency, Liberalism, or Democrats.

This is going on your permanent record and will follow you the rest of your life.

Did the toilet paper stick to my shoe sole again?

 

[yossi]

This is going on your permanent record and will follow you the rest of your life.

Unless you get a restraining order. You don't need to put up with that kind of harassment.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Harassment is attention, and I just do not get enough!

 

[Ishmael]

I think the math works better with a seven-year term to ensure that every other election is not tied to Congressional elections. Maybe an alternating six and seven to ensure only off-year elections so that the whole focus is on the office and not the coat-tails...

Regardless of how the math works out I'd stick with 6 years. I find nothing wrong with 'coattails.' If a candidate has an agenda he/she deserves to have a chance at congressional support. Coattails are actually a broader referendum on the candidates agenda. The candidate that prevails in the congressional 'off' years will have been deprived of that possibility/opportunity.

And then there is the cost of running elections on the communities and states. It gets damned expensive.

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Regardless of how the math works out I'd stick with 6 years. I find nothing wrong with 'coattails.' If a candidate has an agenda he/she deserves to have a chance at congressional support. Coattails are actually a broader referendum on the candidates agenda. The candidate that prevails in the congressional 'off' years will have been deprived of that possibility/opportunity.

And then there is the cost of running elections on the communities and states. It gets damned expensive.

Ishmael

I'm not big anymore on the support by popular election wrought by the 17th Amendment and the effects on central government over-reach.

I prefer he have to form a coalition of compromise by message, policy, and popular mandate. Otherwise, you get Obamacare rammed down our throats by pure party-line ideology.

I might even insist that all Presidential Candidates sever all Party ties and money.



Hey, every time I turn around, our community is having some sort of election.

It is not like it would be something totally unique.

You can vote school bonds at the same time.

 

[Ishmael]

I'm not big anymore on the support by popular election wrought by the 17th Amendment and the effects on central government over-reach.

I prefer he have to form a coalition of compromise by message, policy, and popular mandate. Otherwise, you get Obamacare rammed down our throats by pure party-line ideology.

I might even insist that all Presidential Candidates sever all Party ties and money.



Hey, every time I turn around, our community is having some sort of election.

It is not like it would be something totally unique.

You can vote school bonds at the same time.

Not unique, but yet another burden on the taxpayer.

On the rest we'll just have to agree to disagree. If the people are that stupid, sobeit. Besides, the Federal Republic was fucked with the passage of the 16th and 17th amendments anyway. Doing away with those two might go further than the passage of a single X year term amendment.

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

If we were to return to an actual decentralized Republic, it would be a cost born gladly, but in this age, not a necessary cost, for I could easily see us go to virtual on-line voting as long as the company setting up the procedure were well-vetted through a transparent bidding process and properly audited by a non-governmental third party.



We simply must stop thinking in terms of Lincoln-Douglas elections and get into a more modern paradigm...

 

[Ishmael]

If we were to return to an actual decentralized Republic, it would be a cost born gladly, but in this age, not a necessary cost, for I could easily see us go to virtual on-line voting as long as the company setting up the procedure were well-vetted through a transparent bidding process and properly audited by a non-governmental third party.



We simply must stop thinking in terms of Lincoln-Douglas elections and get into a more modern paradigm...

Realistically not going to happen. As much as most people might agree with you we're too indoctrinated into that paradigm. Further, the two parties have a strangle hold on the process and except for lip-service are going to do everything they can to make sure it never happens. They are both too invested in their own party politics/agenda to allow the unwashed masses real alternatives.

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Realistically not going to happen. As much as most people might agree with you we're too indoctrinated into that paradigm. Further, the two parties have a strangle hold on the process and except for lip-service are going to do everything they can to make sure it never happens. They are both too invested in their own party politics/agenda to allow the unwashed masses real alternatives.

Ishmael

I agree 100%.

It will not happen, we will eventually implode, but from the ashes some ideas might survive...



... as usual, I am running this by the young people who are only now beginning to discover how they are being tapped to pay for my retirement and health care because my generation has wealth and political clout as a group and our government is all about group warfare and picking winners and losers.

 

[phrodeau]

You say you'll change the Constitution.
Well, you know, we all want to change your head.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Yeah, we hear from the "living document" crowd...

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

Yeah, we hear from the "living document" crowd...

If it wasn't meant to be a living document, why put the ability to amend it in place when it was written?

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

You have the right to free speech,
Provided, of course,
You're not actually dumb enough to try it!

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Roark was certainly not the architect!

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Ahahahaha...he would have been appalled by Iron Curtain architecture:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nP2x15ulGDk/UPmDXOwAXCI/AAAAAAAABCE/x5QW7Onvgow/s320/soviet.jpg

Are you sure that's not a Rezko-Obama Project?

Looks like Chicago to me!

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I believe it's modernist Soviet architecture.

Like I said, "You sure that's not..."

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

It could very well be an Obama knock off of Soviet architecture. He loves them so.

Check out the newest government fear in my 3d Printing thread...

 

[unregistered]