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this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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I don't understand why there aren't term limits across the board either. Some Congress wo/men have been there for decades ffs!
Definitely. Age limits are difficult. Some people lose it early. Some never do.
Two terms and you're out seems to me to mostly resolve this.
You can even make it just two consecutive terms. I think I'm largely fine with that. At least it's better than the alternative.
Also, lifetime appointment. That was designed at a different time. Scotus should be a (reasonably long) single term. Then you're done with the federal judicial system.
Yes, can't endorse this enough. Judicial appointments need a term limit, no matter the position. Maybe 10 years maximum.
10 years is nice to because it wouldn't line up exactly with new presidents, so it would guarantee different parties would most likely get to pick.
In 1789, the average lifespan for a Supreme Court justice was 67 years. By 1975, that expectancy had risen to 82 years.
Sure, but how long were they on the court?
Just let agelimits apply to judges as well and make judges appoint judges while you're at it to minimize the politicizing of the bench.
Looking at the way the current SCOTUS is, the last thing I'd want is Justices appointing their replacements.
They should be elected.
They're not that hard, and they're simple and direct, and we already use them. Don't overcomplicate it.
Yes! Term limits are the answer, not age limits. It’s effectively the same thing but protects us in two ways (instead of just one: ie age) and does so without the slippery slope that an age limit would entail.
If a pilot is forced to retire at 65 due to fear of killing a couple hundred, there is absolutely zero reason someone in charge near 400 million shouldn't have a maximum age cap
Can you elaborate?
If we made this change, it would serve as a lever to help increase the age at which we can vote. Which is what these fuckers really want.
Considering a lower age limit would have to be put in place by existing politicians, that particular slope is not slippery at all. And slippery-slope arguments are categorically invalid except when you can point to a specific reason why doing something will make it likely to be done in excess.
I think testing for cognitive function is going to prove impossibly difficult - or at least for now. How do we set and quantify an acceptable value for cognitive function? How will we execute testing? When do we test? How often? Who will do the testing? How do we counter for potential performance drugs for test candidates? Do we notify the public on the test findings? There's just a lot involved with making this the barrier to entry vs age or term limits.
Yeah I was wrestling with this in the same way. It's too hard. That's not even mentioning that cognitive function or mental acuity isn't really a straight or constant line. You could test someone who's off in outer space most days but you test them on the right day they'd ace any cognitive test you put in front of them.
Oh absolutely. I'm a walking, talking banana if you catch me at the wrong time or on the wrong day.
Also, if we went this route and tested for cognitive function- I'd 100% guarantee that our politicians would be on Adderall or some other amphetamine...if they weren't already.
I just worry this would end up disenfranchising minorities somehow. Tests for voting don't have the best history
So you advocate your style of politics with lifetime appointments? Certainly nothing authoritarian to see here
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They're saying that politicians like AOC, Katie Porter, Sanders, etc. are high quality public servants, and that high quality public servants should be able to be elected as long as they have cognitive function.
On one hand, in a hypothetical and ideal scenario, that would be nice to have for us voters.
On the other hand, even if an elected official does great work and has a great track record, should they be able to just serve indefinitely until their brain gives out? There'd be a lot of potential problems such as having entrenched and corruptible political operators, even if they started out good, who prevent "fresh blood" from entering politics. It'd be neat to see a study comparing different countries and political systems where there are age barriers and term limits vs those that don't have them.
High quality public servants in who's eyes? I'm sure Republicans could argue someone like Rand Paul or Marco Rubio are a high quality public servant.
There would need to be a consistency across the board.
I think that's their point: That maybe, as long as a candidate is mentally fit, then voters ought to be able to continue voting for them if they feel like the candidate is still worth voting for.
Honestly, if there was some kind of magical bullet to simply ban candidates who are mentally unfit (i.e. losing their marbles) from holding office that couldn't be exploited, I think a lot of people would find that preferable to an age limit.
That doesn't address issues like politicians who are too technologically illiterate to do things like open PDF files, though.
There didn't used to be but after FDR hit 4 terms in a row, they passed the 22nd Amendment in 1947, it was ratified in 1951.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
A rare example where a Gentleman's Agreement that is important to how our government runs was actually codified.
I think the idea in the Senate is that those people would have been seasoned bureaucrats who were intimately familiar with law - lawyers in particular. The House was more the everyday man representing the people of his district.
Now that we vote for senators, too, I'm not sure what role they really play. I'd also add that we need to remove the cap on headcount in the house. I did the napkin math once and we should have something like 2.5x the representatives we have now, IIRC.
I used to feel this way about Career Politicians but they actually have the opposite problem in some other countries. Politicians having personal businesses makes it very, very easy to bribe them.
Lobbying straight up makes bribery legal for career politicians. How could it possibly be easier than that?
You don't understand why the people who vote on various things won't vote against themselves?? I'm guessing it's the same reason why voting on pay raises for themselves always pass.
That's easy to fix: exempt anyone in office at the time the bill passes.
Don't think that'll work on its own, as they will want to protect the party that gives them their power from, for after they leave office.
The only votes congress has taken regarding their own pay is voting to deny a raise. Every year Congress is set to get an automatic COLA raise, u less they refuse it via vote it automatically kicks in. Those are the votes congress has been conducting. They have voted in pay raises for congressional staff members.
This article is old but details how it works
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