A Republican House member introduced a resolution to amend the U.S. Constitution to allow President Donald Trump — and any other future president — to be elected to serve a third term.
A Republican House member introduced a resolution to amend the U.S. Constitution to allow President Donald Trump — and any other future president — to be elected to serve a third term.
IMO I think they aren’t any good in a vacuum but I do think it’s a good thing that the US specifically has them for the president. If they weren’t there, a determined ghoul administration would be much more effective at just running the gauntlet for decades (the eternal Obama). Currently the “deep state” fulfills that function and there’s a limit to how much they can do domestically, with the inherent limit that they have to act behind the scenes.
The more time a president has in office, the more they can “consolidate power”, which when translated from liberal actually means that they have the time and popularity to take control of the country away from state bureaucracies and entrenched civil society institutions (both of which are the key organs through which the capitalist class’s excercises it’s power).
While trump and the like have no intention of doing anything good with a third term, the reason why so many capitalists/liberals are terrified of fascism/Communism is that these transfer political power from the traditional organs of bourgeois power to the state.
Of course the fascists only do this in order to unify the bourgeoise and eliminate competition amongst them (emergency mode of capitalism).
In this context, term limits in any society come with a big asterisk. Such measures (including stuff like constitutional rights, which in practice only protect the rich) are basically liberal society’s way of operating in normal times. Their degradation across the entire west signals an era of great change. The bourgeoise are gearing up and hardening themselves for class war on a scale never seen before.
Issue is, there’s been a long time since anyone with an ideology even close to rejecting imperialism has gotten close to winning an election at the federal level. Maybe there’s some danger of a new FDR that the technocrats fear, but I think a new FDR would mostly represent revitalizing the mechanisms of exploitation, giving them a new coat of paint. There are capitalists that oppose this out of their short sightedness, but overall it’s not a difference in class perspective, it’s not a change that would move the proles closer to political power.
After all, we believe that this bourgeois state has to be thoroughly dismantled one way or the other before a new socialist state can be built, no? We shouldn’t expect them to make winning moves on our behalf.
This is basically my take as well. Its one of those imperfect solutions to a clearly busted system. If the US was a healthy functioning democracy term limits would probably be bad but between gerrymandering, legalized bribery, and corporate media consolidation about the only reason we don’t have presidents for life at this point is the term limit.
But even without term limits the president would have to spend just as much time focusing on campaigning, right? You would still have the same amount of elections. The president would still spend just as much time ruling the empire as now.
Yeah, I meant it in the sense that you wouldn’t get the rigamarole we’re seeing right now where one guy comes in, does a few things, the next guy comes in and undoes all of them. One president ruling for decades means they can get a coherent program going, which is bad for the rest of the world.
Okay, I think I understand. Trump wants to fuck with Biden’s legacy who wants to fuck with Trump’s legacy who wants to fuck with Obama’s legacy and so forth. Term limits are good in the US because fuck the US.