The Trump Era Constitutional Amendment

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.
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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.
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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?