I live in a state that has term limited its Congressmen/women. It has turned out to be, It sounded good at the time, or It sure was great in theory. Probably, not unlike splitting electoral votes, the unfortunate results may be, in part, attributable to the fact that not all states do term limit. Another unfortunate aspect may be due to the fact that "once a politician, always a politician" in the sense that they wind up in other positions of political influence by political appointment or through patronage in the home state.

If the term limited were good politicians (ie, responsive to their constituents) it works out okay if they turn up as the president of your state university/community college system, etc. In that case you'd have been just as happy if they stayed in DC. If they were unresponsive skunks, while you wouldn't wish them on the rest of the country, their destructive efforts are diluted by their colleagues in Congress. It's hard to counter their destructive tendencies when they sit at the helm of a public agency.

There also seems to be a tendency for those who pull the political levers to feel "sorry" for the term limited. As in, "Gosh, Senator/Representative X deserves to continue their political life somewhere. They'd still be serving us in DC (or, the state legislature) if it weren't for term limits. So, let's see if there isn't a soft landing to be had for them somewhere here at home." To some extent this happens anyway, but I think term limits amplifies it. It seems to be one thing if they fail to get re-elected, but the dynamic appears to be different if they're forced from office.

Anyone have a doctoral student in poli sci whose searching for a dissertation topic? The dynamics of term limits might make for a good one.

The New York Times' revelation that "the Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency's custody" conclusively demonstrates obstruction of justice which, if Michael Mukasey has an ounce of integrity or independence, will be the subject of a serious and immediate criminal investigation.--GG

In response to a large number of the comments so far this morning, instead of all this throwing up our hands, blaming everybody and his sister for everything that has happened and will or might happen in government, bringing up every past failure anyone can come up with, and on and on...why not just apply pressure to the one man who is responsible for carrying this particular ball...Michael Mukasey? Might that be more effective, or at least potentially so, than dragging in every past, present and potential future failure of government and government agents, assuring ourselves that another failure is staring us in the face because there is just nothing to be done about it? The corruption is too deep, the dems are just as bad as the repubs and fill in the blanks, the ball is dropped before it has ever even picked up already.

Geez! What good is all of that 'there's nothing to be done' going to do in this instance? What good is that approach going to do in any instance concerning government today, tomorrow or anytime into the future?

There, we're done now.

But people just get in a rut and recite this trope all day long.

its disgusting

when people say they wish we had a three party system, i say "hell, i wish we had a TWO party system!"

*thank you* for making the point that these Democratic enablers are complicit in the crimes of the Bush™ Administration.

-- grover nerdkissed

We don't have a "two party system" anymore than other democracies have an n party system. No one sets limits on the number of parties. Structural and institutional analyses, please.

How and why it occurs

A two-party system often develops spontaneously from the single-member district plurality voting system (SMDP), in which legislative seats are awarded to the candidate with a plurality of the total votes within his or her constituency, rather than apportioning seats to each party based on the total votes gained in the entire set of constituencies. This trend develops out of the inherent qualities of the SMDP system that discourage the development of third parties and reward the two major parties.

The most obvious inhibiting feature unique to the SMDP voting system is purely statistical. A small third party cannot gain legislative power if it is based in a populous area. Similarly, a statistically significant third party can be too geographically scattered to muster enough votes to win seats, although technically its numbers would be sufficient to overtake a major party in an urban zone. Gerrymandering is sometimes used to counteract such geographic difficulties in local politics, but is impractical and controversial on a large scale. These numerical disadvantages can create an artificial limit on the level at which a third party can engage in the political process.

The second unique problem is both statistical and psychological. Maurice Duverger [1] suggested an election in which 100,000 moderate voters and 80,000 radical voters are voting for a single official. If two moderate candidates and one radical candidate were to run, the radical candidate would win unless one of the moderate candidates gathered less than 20,000 votes. Observing this, moderate voters would be more likely to vote for the candidate most likely to gain more votes, with the goal of defeating the radical candidate. Either the two parties must merge, or one moderate party must fail, as the voters gravitate to the two strong parties, a trend Duverger called polarization.

A third party can only enter the arena if it can exploit the mistakes of a pre-existing major party, ultimately at that party's expense. For example, the political chaos in the United States immediately preceding the Civil War allowed the Republican Party to replace the Whig Party as the progressive half of the American political landscape. Loosely united on a platform of country-wide economic reform and federally funded industrialization, the decentralized Whig leadership failed to take a decisive stance on the slavery issue, effectively splitting the party along the Mason-Dixon Line. Southern rural planters, initially lured by the prospect of federal infrastructure and schools, quickly aligned themselves with the pro-slavery Democrats, while urban laborers and professionals in the northern states, threatened by the sudden shift in political and economic power and losing faith in the failing Whig candidates, flocked to the increasingly vocal anti-slave Republican Party.

In countries that use proportional representation (PR), especially where the whole country forms a single constituency (like Israel), the electoral rules discourage a two-party system; the number of votes received for a party determines the number of seats won, and new parties can thus develop an immediate electoral niche. Duverger identified that the use of PR would make a two party system less likely. However, other systems do not guarantee new parties access to the system: Malta provides an example of a stable two-party system using the single transferable vote.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law

Change the system and explore more public election financing than private and many of your problems will be solved. Term limits may not be necessary.