On Bad Terms

The U.S. prides itself on its freedoms and equality. However, I believe our system is fundamentally flawed. The first, and most prominent, mistake I’ve noticed about our system is the lack of term limits for a majority of positions. While presidency is limited to 2 terms, other equally important positions are unlimited, such as the senate and the House of Representatives. This would not be so bad if these politicians actually did their jobs but they don’t. Instead, they spend a majority of their time trying to get re-elected. In 2012, 91% of incumbents from the senate were re-elected. In that same year, 90% of incumbents from the House of Representative were re-elected. Again, these rates of re-election would not be bad if politicians were actually doing their jobs to get votes. However, that’s often not the case. These politicians are able to advertise better than challengers. After the ruling of U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, Justice John Paul Stevens said that “the right to choose representatives belongs not to the States, but to the people.” While I would love to be able to agree with his statement, I can not as today it seems that this right belongs to the representatives themselves. As for what we can do about this, there are a few things I can think of. First, we could limit the funding to political campaigns and eliminate PACs. This would stop politicians from wasting their time on fundraising because they wouldn’t be able to use the money they fundraised. Alternatively, we could put a limit on the number of terms a politician has. This would also help because incumbents would be less relevant, at least after they have served all possible terms. While these politicians would still be able to fundraise and waste their time on these activities, they would likely have at least one good term, their last, where they tried to fix things.