There has previously been much talk about Constitutional Amendments as a way
to secure liberty and prosperity for our faltering nation, before President
Donald Trump was elected. The issues and causes have not been forgotten but
sidelined for the moment.
I would like to point out a great flaw in the concept of term limits, that
seem all the rage among talk show hosts. Let me lead with my strongest points
and then copy from my previous posts made on this topic in January 2010, and
August 2013.
I have have seen potentially great Presidents in this country in my lifetime,
but only two stand out clear and absolute as great.
One would be President Ronald Reagan. He was first inaugurated when he was
nearly 70 years of age.
The other would be President Donald Trump, already one of our greatest
Presidents based on real accomplishments after only two years in office. He was
first inaugurated well into the age of 70.
What if President Donald Trump were elected as President at 40 years of
age?
What kind of Supreme Court justices would he have nominated?
What if the age requirement for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were 35 rather than
25, would her proclivities change over the next 6 years?
Would you trust Representative Ocasio-Cortez, or any millennial under the age
of 35, to hold a seat on a committee dealing with our national security and top
secret information critical to holding a tactical advantage over our
enemies?
Yes, we do need a constitutional amendment, but not to implement term limits,
but rather to raise the age requirements for office by ten years across the
board.
Or would you rather create, with term limits, a revolving door pumping out
one lobbyist after another to serve the interests of corporate America and our
destructive political bureaucracy, rather than the interests of the American
people?
We can no longer allow untested individuals to hold the greatest positions of
power in the world.
We need a Constitutional Amendment to raise the age requirements for holding
elected office, not term limits. A Constitutional Amendment for term limits
would be disastrous.
From January 5, 2010, “Term Limits?
….No!”: edited and abridged.
As we deal with an out of touch Congress, defying the will of the people and
burying us all in legislation that they don't even understand, many have
propounded term limits as the solution. If it were such a great idea our
founders would have put it into the Constitution. They, like us today, wanted
Congress to be made up of common men. They implemented this desire through age
requirements.
Twenty-five years is the minimal requirement for elected office in the
Constitution. And where was the average twenty-five year old in the 18th
century? He was most likely married with his own family well established.
Already a businessman, artisan or professional of some type and known in his
community for his own individual accomplishments.
And where is an average twenty-five year old today? They may very well still
be living with their parents (the parents taking care of the children not the
children taking care of the aged parents). The twenty-five year old today has
most likely applied for their first job, but not necessarily. If they
are seeking higher education, they could still be in school, and if seeking a
career in academia will remain there. And how different is an academic career
from a political career?
Right out of school one can work for a political machine. A government
subsidized position requiring, obvious when you look at what is passing for
legislation these days, only the ability to move ones mouth. Many of those that
can claim private sector experience had token positions, gained through the
influence of money and family, having been put into a holding pattern until the opportunity for them to run for office presented itself.
Yes, some have true private sector experience, but is any industry free from
political/big government ties these days? Some use their military service as a
platform. And a few, from whatever background, are just truly good people. But
for the most part our nation is suffering from politics as a profession. Where
serving politics trumps common sense experience as a requirement. We could blame
the media again, for they powerfully influence what the public considers a
legitimate requirement or not, but they don't vote for us.
…
So how does one get a grip on Congress? Maybe the grip was lost when we put
term limits on the Presidency? The balance of power, so wisely designed by our
forefathers, being disrupted, by having Presidents labeled lame ducks for large
portions, 25%, of their potential term of office.
Having a political positioning frenzy on both sides when no incumbent with
clear policies and direction can challenge, having a Congress that can simply
wait out a President to push through their control building agendas, and an
important check and balance is compromised.
…
We can say that the scale of the federal government shields our
representatives from being held accountable in elections, unlike local
politicians, but that accountability factor doesn't exist for the President. The
one position that people take seriously and look to hold accountable, that's the
position we put term limits on?!
I know this plays into the liberal desires for President Obama to hold office
for life (this was written in 2010), but the reality is we would all be better
off removing term limits on the Presidency. And only corruption, successfully
implemented on a scale never before seen, could keep him in office. And if that
exists only revolt will save us.
‘I would surmise that President Obama only won a second term because the
people knew he could not run for a third.’
From August 27, 2013, “Absolutely No Term Limits, A Critique of “The
Liberty Amendments””: excerpts (edited and revised)
Mark Levin makes the case for raising the age requirements himself. He
highlights in great detail the popularity and practice of term limits at the
time of the Constitution. Then Mr. Levin explains how, with age requirements,
for the first hundred years of this country the majority of elected officials in
both the Senate and House held only two terms or even a single term of office.
‘Isn’t this what we want? Raise the age requirements! Mr. Levin greatly
slipped here into caring about the sways of political tides.’
Further, term limits do not break the power of the political class, where the
party, people whose entire life experience has not been in the private sector
but rather confined to the world of politics, decides from their own ranks who
will run; or in other words who will receive the financial backing.
If the age requirements were raised twenty years across the board the
people’s choice will be clear, far more transparent.
Though the effect on Presidential candidate races may be slight, in
Congressional races an open seat may very well be in contention between a
profession politician versus the likes of Wisconsin’s standing Senator Ron
Johnson, a manufacturer highly accomplished in the private sector who stands for
true reform and a return to traditional values in our government. The public
would then be able to decide between a professional politician with a political
life’s work and practice of decades, a voting record, that could be clearly
scrutinized, against a highly accomplished private sector individual with their
own finances; the likes of Donald Trump or even Bill Gates and the late Steve
Jobs.
Though the politics of the fore mentioned private sector giants may not all
be conservative, even far from the fact, would such men tolerate an inefficient,
irresponsible and dishonest system that crushes the American Dream?
