What if earlier ideas of political term limits were still common?

Thande

Donor
A rather vague question, so let me outline what I mean. In the ancient world through to early modern times, elected offices tended to be either:

1) For life, or

2) For a very short term by modern standards, like six months or one year.

Also, instead of having an absolute term limit like some offices have nowadays (e.g. you can only serve 2 or 3 terms), it was more common to have a rule like "you can be elected to as many terms as you want, but you can't succeed yourself so you can't serve consecutive terms" or more esoterically "you can only serve X number of years in a Y-year period" which comes to the same thing.

A few traditional elected offices like this survive today, but the vast majority of elected offices nowadays have much longer terms (four, five, six years) and there is no longer a taboo about succeeding yourself (i.e. being directly re-elected). Arguably the USA, or rather the USA's federal government, is to blame for this for setting a precedent that inspired many others. (The states, on the other hand, often preserved many of these older ideas for a long time, especially in New England). So what if some of these ideas got into the USA's federal constitution? Shorter terms are probably not that feasible because of the size of the country and the problems of collecting the votes with 18th century technology (the 2-year terms of Representatives probably indicates how short they could realistically go) but what about making it so there are no explicit term limits on the presidency--just like OTL until the 22nd amendment--but you aren't allowed to succeed yourself, so nobody can run for re-election, you have to wait another four years to run again?

Another aspect is that older conceptions generally lacked the idea of there being an automatic succession (in some US states, the president of the state senate took over if a Governor died or moved up to a federal office, but this was explicitly a short-term caretaker thing) and generally demanded a new vote if a leader died or otherwise was no longer in office. The reason why I bring this up is that otherwise sitting presdients might try and get around the no direct re-election rule by running as vice-president to a puppet who would then resign so they can take over again--remember before John Tyler nobody agreed on whether the vice-president should automatically succeed the president or not.

Any other ideas about this?
 
My thought is to have a more Hamiltonian constitution. A President for Life would be politically sidelined fairly quickly (Washington would go fine, but people would get sick of Adams or Jefferson after the first decade or so). A Senate for Life would remain politically powerful for much longer, but I still see their powers being curbed in the long run (presumably after a political crisis, them blocking a popular budget a la House of Lords 1911). Further, something like the Chartist idea of annual parliaments gets implemented in the UK. This sets an example, I think, for democratizing countries: politically powerful, but short-termed offices (Congress, the Commons), and life-long, but impotent, offices (President, King, Senate, the Lords).

The problem then is to get the term-limits as you want them. What I imagine is that some sort of alt-populist movement that is fed up with how the leadership never changes despite the frequent election, and so comes around to mandating a rotation of offices from Congress-to-Congress. And not sure this fits what you're talking about, since it's less a retention of traditional ideas than a reinvention of them.
 
The President-for-Life would moot the idea of automatic succession, of course, because a death or resignation would be the only instigator of a new election.
 
Our Constitutional Convention must have considered one year terms and decided rightly that they were TOO short, it was just TOO much electing. And Consuls had term limits on how they ould serve, ISTR, like ours.

And the way succession mostly worked in the classical world was multiple alternates selected to each post at once, so if one died, others could succeed their particular duties - there two Roman Consuls and ten Athenian elected generals. Sparta even had two Kings at once.
 

Jasen777

Donor
Texas had the no consecutive terms thing for president and it caused some chaos - Houston's faction couldn't manage to field a decent candidate for the first non-Houston election (Houston's first two picks committed suicide).

If the U.S. still has a entrenched 2 party system, it'd be interesting to see if there'd be a block of voters who voted for the other party on a principal that the parties should be switched along with the president.
 

Thande

Donor
(Houston's first two picks committed suicide).
"To have one candidate commit suicide, Mr Houston, may be regarded as a misfortune. To have both commit suicide looks like carelessness!"

If the U.S. still has a entrenched 2 party system, it'd be interesting to see if there'd be a block of voters who voted for the other party on a principal that the parties should be switched along with the president.
Good point. This system was (and is) generally found in situations where either elections are nonpartisan or there is a dominant party, so it would be strange to see how they work out in a two-party system.
 
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