A one-term, six-year presidency would reinvigorate the broken, gridlocked American political system. This is not a new idea; in fact, the delegates of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 favored a one-term, seven-year executive tenure but decided against it largely for political reasons. There is, however, an urgent need for change today in the hyper-partisan capital where, as former Senator Jim DeMint put it: “Good ideas go to die.”
President Obama, like his predecessors, has suffered from the status quo in two principal ways: he spent far too much time in his first term campaigning for reelection than actually governing and in his second term has been mired by the “second-term curse.”
President Obama held 164 fundraising events for reelection and party committees in the third and fourth years of his first term. This figure doesn’t include daily calls, emails and general fundraising correspondence. Put simply, two four-year terms result in presidents spending the latter half of their first terms acting as fundraiser-in-chief. Presidents can no longer do their job effectively when so much of their time and focus is necessarily swept up in their bid for reelection.
The “second-term curse” is a trend in American politics where presidents’ second terms are far less successful and effective. Two-term presidents may find the bulk of their legislative achievements in the first two years of their tenure. This highlights how the necessary impacts of a second term are not only more fundraising and less governing for the third and fourth years, but also prolonged executive impotence and ossified partisan gridlock for the final four.
Furthermore, if there were a one-term presidency, presidents could address the most critical public policy challenges in a meaningful, long-term way without worrying about reelection and pandering towards electorally important interest groups. Instead of politicking, the emphasis of the presidency would be on enacting substantive reform with meaningful legislative and executive initiatives.
A six-year term would promote continuity and harmony in executive leadership while retaining democratic accountability and legitimacy. An oft-cited criticism of a longer single-term presidency asserts there is no reason for the president to do what is popular, but to only do what he thinks is best. We can circumnavigate this criticism in two ways. The first is that reelection isn’t the only democratic check on the presidency; indeed, the last three presidents could attest that it is a much easier job when you have both chambers of the legislature on your side. If a six-year term president continually acts against the popular will, the makeup of both legislative bodies will reflect that, thus restraining the president to a narrower course of action. The second way to mitigate any concern over unaccountability in the Oval Office would be to introduce the potential for the legislature (if two-thirds of both chambers voted affirmatively) after three and a half years to call for a referendum, at the end of the fourth year, on whether the president should be allowed to finish his term. This provision would prevent an exceptional situation in which the president was continually pursuing unpopular initiatives or abusing the powers of the office.
A six-year presidency will ensure that the leader of the free world spends his time leading and governing instead of pandering to mega-donors. Furthermore, free from the distraction of reelection, the president could better pursue initiatives and policy goals that are in the long-term interest of the nation. This nation spent nearly two billion dollars in the 2012 presidential election supporting the two major party presidential candidates — just so President Obama could get re-elected with a strong mandate and suffer from the “second-term curse,” achieving none of his biggest second-term legislative priorities in critical areas like gun control, immigration reform and infrastructure investment. America’s greatest public office deserves better than that, so let’s make a change towards a leaner, smarter, more effective presidency.
Ben Rudgley is an Opinion Columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at b.rudgley@cavalierdaily.com.
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