Bloomberg’s an oligarch – he’s used to getting what he wants because he’s rich.
He threw money at winning bought the job of mayor of New York, and, after he had been mayor for a while and was bumping up against term limits in 2008, he campaigned to get the limit changed so he could remain in power a bit longer. That was successful.
The whole point of term limits is that a society is saying they’ve decided that nobody’s so great at a job that they deserve to hold it for life. Electing people to positions implies that, to some degree, office-holders are interchangeable. That’s a fact in a real democracy: there are always competent people waiting in the wings. When you don’t have term limits, you wind up with corrupt old fossils and living dinosaurs like Strom Thurmond and Nancy Pelosi, who would rather die than step out of the limelight.
So, Bloomberg joined Vladimir Putin and all the other oligarchs who were just having too damn much fun being the bigshot that they re-wrote the rules so they could hog the stage a bit longer.
But wait, there’s more: when he was done being mayor, he changed the law back. [nyt]
[This was in 2010]
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg thinks that being able to serve three terms in office is a good idea just not for anyone else.
On Monday, in an unexpected confession, Mr. Bloomberg said he wanted to reverse the changes to the city’s term-limits law, which he successfully campaigned for in 2008. Those changes are now the subject of a little-publicized ballot initiative on Election Day.
The mayor said he would vote to restore a limit of two terms, down from three, and to ban the City Council from rewriting the rule for sitting elected officials, closing a legislative loophole that Mr. Bloomberg exploited in his quest to remain in office beyond eight years. The results of the ballot initiative would not affect Mr. Bloomberg, but would affect his successors.
What a jerk. I hope Trump doesn’t hear about that because he’s going to want to do likewise or worse.
He has already said that he should be allowed to do so.
johnson catman@#1:
He has already said that he should be allowed to do so.
I hope that he’s hauled kicking and screaming out of the oval office by a couple of US Marines. And they don’t need to be gentle loading him into the Suburban, if you know what I mean.
I disagree. As someone who has actual studied constitutional construction with a focus on democratic constitutions, I think that that the most important point supporting term limits is that incumbency provides electoral advantages. The greater this advantage, the less a final vote reflects an actual evaluation of competence of the candidate and policy preferences of the electorate.
As a result, there could, in fact, be someone so great at the job that they “deserve” to hold it for life. The problem is that even if a person is getting elected over and over because they’re the best candidate, the people living under a constitution can be less and less certain that an assessment of which candidate is best is actually driving the reelections. Consistent reelection of a chief executive, even where the person being reelected is in fact the best candidate undermines democracy.
The choice to impose term limits, then, is a statement that preserving the possibility of reelecting a competent or deserving chief executive is not worth the damage done to confidence in democratic institutions in the process.
After having written all this, I suppose it’s possible that this is what you meant in saying that no one “deserves” perpetual reelection, but I’m not going to delete this comment since your original “deserve” statement is open to the interpretation “no person is sufficiently skilled or competent so as to deserve indefinite reelection”. That interpretation was heightened by what you said about skilled persons “waiting in the wings” and no mention of the corruption of necessary democratic confidence & institutions. This comment, even if it is what you intended in the first place, will hopefully clarify that even a hypothetical best possible chief executive would not “deserve” indefinite reelection, even if no clear second best qualified candidate was waiting in the wings.
None of this, of course, changes or even remotely challenges your conclusion that Bloomberg is an asshat.
[of course, there are other reasons as well, not least that power tends to corrupt, and thus someone who was once a good candidate is more likely to become a corrupt office holder the longer they remain in office]
re Marcus @2: I would really like to see him hauled off by the guys in white coats NOW instead of having to wait for him to be ejected in January 2021.
There’s also the way that the longer a person or even a party is in power, the more they start to see themselves as the government and the harder it can be to clean things up once they’re removed. This happened in Ontario over thirty years ago after the Progressive Conservative Party ran the province from 1943 to 1985 through six different Premiers. When Liberal Party head David Peterson took over, it apparently took months to disentangle the provincial documentation from the information held in the Progressive Conservative Party headquarters.
And that wasn’t even necessarily deliberate obstruction, just getting too comfortable with taking shortcuts rather than following the official process.
I used to be opposed to term limits because logically it seemed wrong to boot competent people when the voters could just vote them out if they became incompetent or otherwise problematic. Over the years, though, the laziness and stupidity of the electorate (myself included) has changed my mind, and shenanigans like gerrymandering and the way Congress is set up to reward seniority over competence has made terms limits an imperative.
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But what also needs to change is how Congress operates. We can’t afford another Moscow Mitch. We also need to bar Congress critters from becoming lobbyists, period, not just for a few years. Congress or lobbyist, pick one. I think termed-out Senators and Reps could be allowed to become career civil servants or appointees, though that would have to be tested for a few years to see if they carry on their corruption unabated.
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Finally, lifetime judgeships, even for the Supremes (would it require a constitutional amendment for them?) must be done away with. This is now even more critical than terms limits on Congress. 12 year maximums should be plenty to assure “impartiality” (20 at the absolute absolute tops), insofar as they don’t come in already wildly partisan as 99% of Twittler’s appointees are. It’s not like we have a shortage of lawyers in this country to choose from.
Term limits are absolutely necessary on the executive branch, but can be counter-productive on the legislative. The executive is mostly career bureaucrats, so they tend to have continuity between executive dynasties. The legislative is supposed to provide oversight of these agencies filled with career employees, and that requires familiarity and continuity by the legislative. In states that have imposed term limits on the legislative, the executive has tended to receive much less effective oversight than before term limits were imposed.
Definitely not opposed to term limits on judicial positions and absolutely opposed to judicial elections. Strict vetting requirements, comprehensive knowledge/experience requirements, code of conduct applicable to all levels of judicial, and impeachment are all also an absolute necessity if there are no term limits.
I have never been that keen on term limits. Just about the time someone learns their job they are forcibly retired? Lose all institutional memory be cause you cannot sit in the House of Commons for more than 10 years?
Angela Merkel has been Chancellor for 14 or 15 years.
The idea of term limits does not seem to make a lot of sense where there are no fixed terms. Do we count elections? You cannot be Prime minister for more than two elections? Hell, in Australia that could be no more than a long weekend (apologies to Australians for the exaggeration) And members fairly regularly lone n elertiotn and return to the House either from the same or a different riding in the next election.
In parliamentary systems such as Canada or Australia one would need to apply the term limits to all representatives. I do not see how it could be applied to just the PM or cabinet ministers. The PM and cabinet ministers are elected members of parliament (or Senate in Au).
So, Bloomberg joined Vladimir Putin and all the other oligarchs who were just having too damn much fun being the bigshot that they re-wrote the rules so they could hog the stage a bit longer.
Ah sorry Marcus, Putin did not rewrite the rules. The Russian Federation’s constitution allowed no more than two consecutive terms as president. I think we can agree that he blatantly exploited that by becoming prime minister for a term but he did not pull a Bloomberg and get an amendment to the constitution. He just played by the rules.
And when I hear of term limits I think of William Lyon MacKenzie King. He was Prime Minister of Canada for 1921–26, then 1926–30 and then1935–48. When does a term limit cut in?
Certainly, in some (many?) cases incumbency in a seat gives a distinct advantage in many jurisdictions but to be honest, the rigid, institutionalized, noncompetitive, two party system in the USA seems more of a problem than a lack of term limits even if they make sense.
Duh, “lone n elertiotn” should read “lose an election”.
One of the things a functioning democracy needs to accomplish is the reasonably regular redistribution of power between different groups. Even if one of those groups is incompetent, they still need to get a shot because it’s only by keeping more-or-less everybody on-side that the whole system retains its legitimacy.
Remember, the core purpose of democracy is not to ensure that the best people get the top jobs, or even that the rulers of a country represent the wishes of the people – it’s to minimise the amount of blood shed during transitions of power from one faction to another. It’s in everybody’s interests to ensure that no faction is locked out of power to the extent that they feel the need to resort to mass violence.
Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden @#3:
I’ve had to sit and think about your comment for a couple days and I’ve got to say, I’m convinced. So I’m not going to quote it all and just go “ok, yeah you’re right” to the whole thing.
I think that that the most important point supporting term limits is that incumbency provides electoral advantages. The greater this advantage, the less a final vote reflects an actual evaluation of competence of the candidate and policy preferences of the electorate.
Boom. You are so right.
Dunc@#11:
Remember, the core purpose of democracy is not to ensure that the best people get the top jobs, or even that the rulers of a country represent the wishes of the people – it’s to minimise the amount of blood shed during transitions of power from one faction to another.
The old “democracy is a short-hand way of figuring out who’d win if we had a big fist-fight instead of an election” argument. I used to believe that, and I think I still do – except that it’s pretty clear that one side would never play fair and it’d be fists against machine guns.
When I trace all this stuff through my brain I come out with no belief in democracy at all, any more.
What’s left? Anarcho-syndicalism seemed like a good idea, except that our notion of “labor” doesn’t map very well onto 19th century industrial capitalism. I just don’t know. It’s trying to answer that problem that led me down the rat-hole of trying to invent my own political systems (Badgeria and my postings about the republic) it seems like it’s not hard to invent novel political systems but the problem is how to keep the motherfuckers with rifles from coming in and just taking over. And then we go ’round again: the obvious answer is to be the motherfucker with the rifle – in which case you’re a Maoist/Stalinist. Ugh.
No, that’s not really what I mean – I mean it’s a way of carving things up amongst the various power factions in a society such that none of them feel the need to slaughter each other every few decades, because they can be fairly confident that they’ll get their turn running things soon enough. It’s not about who would win if they did fight, it’s about making sure that nobody thinks it’s worth the risk of finding out. Better to keep all the goodies safe and take your turn controlling them than play for keeps and risk burning the place down…
To Marcus
For what little it’s worth, I think that culture is important, and that education of children in political history and politics in generation is vitally important. I think that having just one semester of civics in high school is a disgrace, and I’d much rather displace some other classes with more civics and political history and legal theory.
The real problem is getting this taught well. On that, I have no idea. It’s a standard catch-22. A culture who valued this would probably support it, but how do you change the culture to support it in order to raise the next generation to also support it? Hell if I know.
I also think that a party-list system is miles better than the current horrid US system. I know that party-list systems have their problems, but a two-party system is way, way worse.
PS:
I also don’t see why the US president has so much power. I would get rid of his legislative power, the veto, at a minimum.
GerrardOfTitanServer@#15:
I think that having just one semester of civics in high school is a disgrace, and I’d much rather displace some other classes with more civics and political history and legal theory.
Nah. Kids should spend more time in school. Or, be expected to study stuff on their own, Finland-style.
I also don’t see why the US president has so much power. I would get rid of his legislative power, the veto, at a minimum.
I think it’s a legacy of totalitarianism that there is a single individual identified as leader. There could be a pentumvirate or a committee of 20, with different parceling out of responsibilities for emergency decision-making. That would really help when all the politicians appear to be demented.
To Marcus
Yea, I see the value in a single point of command for emergencies, but that’s like for emergencies. It should definitely come with strict oversight for any non-emergency use of the emergency powers, i.e. immediate removal from office and imprisonment, as warranted by the particular overreach. I don’t want 20 people in a room trying to vote or form a consensus. Then again, I could easily argue against myself by attacking my own premise – how likely is the need for these emergency powers anyway? I’m thinking like responding to a surprise military attack. Probably some emergency discretionary power to deal with hurricanes and other natural disasters ala FEMA.
However, I totally agree with you that the large majority of the president’s powers seems to stem from the legacy of the American founders still thinking that they needed a king-like figure. I don’t blame them too much. It was the only system that they knew. However, we are better than them. We know a lot more than them. We can do a lot better today.
That’s approximately what is happening in parliamentary democracies with coalition governments.
Emergencies are various. A nuclear power plant accident, a large forest fire, or a virus epidemic each requires different knowledge in order to deal with these problems. Even if you elected a competent president who is knowledgeable about various different subjects (a big if), then this one person still wouldn’t have the necessary knowledge to deal with any potential emergency.
Last time I checked, there were 8 confirmed coronavirus cases in Latvia. So far the government response has been mostly reasonable. Here the people in charge of dealing with this problem actually have degrees in medicine. And, no, it’s not the prime minister or the president who is mainly responsible for dealing with the coronavirus epidemic. Instead it’s the same people who are responsible for Latvian healthcare system also during non-emergencies. And these people have degrees in medicine, because that’s considered a job requirement.
During a virus epidemic, I’d rather prefer the person in charge to be some kind of Minister of Health or something like that and I’d want this person to have a medical degree as a job requirement. I don’t want the person in charge to be an angry orange cheeto president who has no clue whatsoever about how to respond to such an emergency.
Andreas Avester@#18:
Emergencies are various. A nuclear power plant accident, a large forest fire, or a virus epidemic each requires different knowledge in order to deal with these problems. Even if you elected a competent president who is knowledgeable about various different subjects (a big if), then this one person still wouldn’t have the necessary knowledge to deal with any potential emergency.
The principle of a representative government is that the president’s power is necessary to act as the tie-breaker when they’ve collected all the good advice from their top-notch experts and there is still disagreement. Which is stupid, of course, because that happens only very seldom in the history of the world. “Sir, the advisory panel is deadlocked on the important issue of whether or not they should come in out of the rain!” (answer: have them shot) Needing an executive for a final decision is a tacit admission that the advisors and board of directors can’t cut it in an emergency.
Naturally, that reasoning is favored by people who want to be president.
To Marcus
I don’t think it’s stupid for emergency military matters. Excepting that, I might still be able to imagine some exceptions, but I think that the truth lies much closer to you than it does current practice.