It’s very rare in America for a president to last only 1 term. Why is that?
Is it because once a president starts a job, he becomes the best man for the job. The American people want him to finish it?
Is it familiarity? Voting for the predictable feels more secure, even if you don’t like it, than the unpredictable and the new? (This is often a phenomenon of people feeling more insecure about leaving an abusive relationship than staying in one: if you can predict the abuse, it’s easier to handle).
Is it just that America usually votes right the first time? If the majority votes for X in the first term, that means they think X is the right man for the job, and if they’re usually right, then why wouldn’t he be the right man for the job in the second term?
Is it experience? Once a president has served a term in office, he is ipso facto more experienced at the job than some newbie.
Are the elections are rigged? When you’re the president, you (somehow) have the advantage of being able to rig the system more than other candidates.
It’s important to distinguish these guys from presidents who didn’t go for re-election as the question of this thread revolves around voter preference, not candidate availability.
So what does that mean? Like a Republican might make a deal with a Democrat that if they win, they do something that benefits the Republicans? Then when voters hear about this deal, some Republican voters might vote Democrat simply because they want that deal to follow through?
George Washington started the tradition even prior to having to install a constitutional amendment restricting the office to two terms.
Two administrations is enough, but one isn’t always enough. We always presumed the office was larger than one man, it is designed to attract the biggest egos, but coincidentally it isn’t about the most obvious thing present in that office, the president, but rather our ability to supply more men willing to fulfill that office in their best capacities, each one differing.
This is the literal reason why “eight years”. When Franklin Roosevelt trespassed on this tradition, getting elected four terms, we freaked out a bit. At a certain point, it becomes impossible to shake a president out if office, they aren’t a parliamentary byproduct, like US Presidents prior to George Washington were. The office has a confidence and purpose within the larger frame of government that no parliamentary executive ever could. Think equivelent to a starfleet captain on a ship.
You more or less gotta be a fuck up to get kicked out on reelection, as the majority chose you in the first place, and many see their initial fears were not qualified. A lot of people will note Trump didn’t live up to the leftist hype, it be very hard to find a actual person anywhere in America capable of living up to their fear mongering, so Trump will by default get a lot of people to at the very least, shrug and accept him. If he can’t, then someone else may very well be president. Given how close the election was and how low his approval ratings are, he has the highest chance of any recent president of having this happen. However, he seems to be a rather classical Machiavellian leader, he is clearing house fast in his inner circle that got him elected and seems to be aiming at centrist reform. It may very well mark him as one of the best presidents in American history if he can pull this off.
Gib, I said the leaders of the parties. Ever really go to the .gov sites? Look at the bills and laws being proposed, passed and vetoed. And recall there is no line item veto allowed. Read and study that shit they pass and have passed then what they propose really, study the wording, look at their definitions for the bill and laws. Then you tell me if you do not see historical hand washing. You need to look at the people to, their investments and such.
I think varients of line item veto is allowed in some states, One state (Minnesota or Wisconsin) tried like, eight variations on the line item veto, each one bring struck down in court over time. Been a while since I last looked at it.
Well, good luck to you guys. I mean it. Trump really does seem like a gamble to me.
You know Turd, you have just earned my respect with this post. It was a pretty solid answer to my question.
Now the problem with this is that I took a vow long ago to never respect you. The compromise I have come to is to make this a limited time offer. This newly established respect I have for you will expire in three days, after which point you must throw down another slam dunk answer to one of my questions–any one, there’s tons here at ILP, dig up an old thread–and if I deem it equal or greater than this answer, you will have earned another three days of respect.
But do enjoy the three days of respect you currently have (you lucky dog, you).
Thanks for the direction Kris… so much to learn for a newbie.
Less and less, and no obvious guiding principle predicts which federal precedents are going to be imposed by the supreme court on state practices. My presumption till a few weeks ago was a ideal of the “Universal Magistrate”, that Judges at ever level are expected to follow the conduct and prejudices of the federal courts in respect to fair conduct, that precedents were more a chastisement on the lower court judges per state.
Now I’m less convinced, as the precedents don’t even filter through the federal branches of courts evenly. That was my underlining gripe with the Indian Courts thread- we have multiple court systems (not just Indian Courts) that proceed after precedent is established, as if it never applied to them in the first place.
It appears states have much less power to legislate than the courts do, and it was never explained to me it was the case, or why. Even lawyers are shocked and startled when I raise this issue. Just, doesn’t occur to anyone that our system operates so lop sided and blindly. Our main strength of having a common law system over a civil system in 49 states is that we have high predictability in law through president, but president itself is a wild, crazy, unpredictable beast, and just because it lands from the highest court on a case, it doesn’t mean it is universally applicable as we were taught.
The Bush administrations valid use of water boarding torture is one case, Supreme Court stamped the states from using coercive confessions, but has no capacity over military courts, especially overseas. What if we did it on a ship? How about Diego Garcia? What if we did it on a iceberg that broke off from Alaska and floated into international waters? What if we did it in a aircraft above 10,000 feet? What if a Canadian agent did it on US soil, in a non-military establishment (no military officer in charge of the list) with our permission? What if the ICC or UN orders us to torture? What if handing someone over is torture? What if we do it on Indian Lands, or get Indians to do it?
You remember when gay marriage was a state right? Lower courts were systematically triggered in a cascade event to match progressively higher courts, wasn’t based on semblance, as many courts were resistant, and couldn’t point to any obvious law, constitutional clause or precedent, 100% purely made up right, in states that never passed it. My concern is much less over unmarried buttfuckers now marrying one another and buttfucking, in and of itself Sodomy is Sodomy, but the absolute sudden and deeply unpredictable randomness in which this can occur, with the federal imposing itself on the states on a false synthesized principle (to this day, no right to gay marriage except in those states that passed laws, or by judicial fiat based on a purely legal fiction).
Nobody knew how to stop it because nobody knew how the precedent works. In England and some parliamentry nations, they can affirm via the legislature what law fucking is when courts do this crazy shit, we have the inverse mechanism- gives incredible stability to our laws, but your starting to see these Agent Smith Rights popping up in places it literally never occured to anyone unimpeachable constitutional rights existed. There may of been some good hearted reasons early in the civil rights era, but now- we literally are just gonna have to periodically elect a Neo to battle the Smiths (Trump performs this function in degree) till the made up rights wrecking our system are overturned or starved of meaning.
Only in a very few places, like Virginia with the attorney general, can a legal pronouncement be made clarifying confusion on law. Our Proclamations and Executive Orders were expected in the executive to fulfill this function of British Courts, but it has been done more for the executive to legislate laws, and much less to clarify them. Obama severely abused this capacity, I don’t know if Trump will reign it in or not? The Emancipation Proclamation dealt with war contriband, so was legal in scope. A president can explain any law he wants, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t contestible in courts at any level or can be disregarded by the courts, especially the surpreme. Nobody takes proclamations anymore as a actual clarification of the law anymore, but more of a dictorual legislative capacity inbodied in one man. You can be locked away on felony charges for violating a executive order, they are funded without representatives, do not pass through the origination clause at all, and are not obviously advertised anywhere I’ve cone across. I’m one of those nerds who try to know the laws, and I have yet to find a place in any library in the country that makes it identifiable “these are executive orders” save in very rare case studies of long dead presidents. I would like to see a copy stitutional clause added that let’s the Senate have the capacity to overthrow the definitions of supreme court precedents not obviously identifiable or traced back to their supposed sources with the capacity to say “in this case, this is what we fucking meant asshats by these laws” as a counter balance to the House’s monopoly on the Origination Clause.
It’s because when the candidate is running, the other party tries to make him sound as horrible and disastrous as possible. In reality, Presidents very rarely have enough influence on the country to actually be the kind of disaster the opposition party wants people to believe, so when that President runs again, the criticisms ring hollow. Also, at the end of the day, America is a really strong, good nation, so any given incumbent is going to have a generally happy populace to appeal to, even if they don’t always act like it.
If my theory is correct, then Trump has a very very high chance of being elected, since people will have four years to discover that he is neither a retard nor Hitler, and he won’t really have enough power to change the country in ways that justify the present panic.
Again, another bang up answer–in many ways echoing your predecessor, Turd–but unfortunately not quite as thorough, so I’m afraid you only get half the respect points. The good news is, I never vowed to disrespect you, so you get to keep those points indefinitely, and that’s something to be proud of.
Almost as big of a joke as what what you’ve been keeping in your hand tonight.
Maybe big isn’t the best word to describe it, can mislead one to false expectations.
Ladies, you don’t gotta be like all the guys and laugh at that, but you gotta be careful how you “handle” Gib’s sense of humor, or the joke could be in you.
