One Problem with American Politics:

It seems like we have been hearing news about who is running, who is not running, who is raising the most/least funds, this, that, and the other thing about the 2008 Presidential Election since virtually the day after the 2004 election. Members of our House of Representatives virtually never stop campaigninng and fund raising. It has made me wonder when they have time to do their jobs... Hillary Clinton has spent the last 8 years serving as junior Senator from New York, but all that time has been running for President and even had time to write an autobiography. As has been noted, if she was writing a book, was she really concentrating on the needs of New Yorkers?

Be that as it may, this post is really about how the 24 hour news cycle and developments in transportation and communications technologies have conspired to obsolete a portion of the U.S. Constitution. Term lenghts are stipulated by Article 1, Sections 2 and 3 for Representatives and Senators, and Article 2, Section 1 for the President.

The framers considered 2 years to be a reasonable length of time for representatives to hold office, but given travel times, risks, and costs in the late 18th century, one has to imagine that the framers considered that representatives would spend at least 75-80% of their term in Washington. Do we believe that our representatives spend this high a percentage of their time working in Washington now? My own feeling is that one of the reason we have no statesmen of the stature of Clay, Calhoun, Hughes, Wilson, or Roosevelt, but only politicians, is that our leaders have no time to do their jobs and lead, but spend all of their time campaigning and fundraising.

My feeling is that we need to reconsider the term lengths we have for our legislators and President. Doubling House terms to 4 years, lengthening the President's term to 6 years, and changing Senatorial terms to 8 or 9 years seems to me like it would allow our representatives time to learn their jobs, and then concentrate on those jobs for a reasonable length of time before having to stand for election again.

Maybe, just maybe, that would allow us as citizens material other than sound bites to work with in making our decisions as to who to vote for.