Blair Stands Firm

[poliphilo]

The Labour party has just received a hammering in the local elections; they've been forced down into third place. No governing party has ever been so badly humiliated.

The reason for the hammering is Iraq and the reason for Iraq is Blair.

And Blair is standing firm. He wants to stay in charge until he's "got the job done."

But in politics the job never is done. There are no endings. No final victory parades. One thing flows into the next.

No Political leader ever wants to step down. Things look bad now, but one last push and we'll arrive at the sunlit uplands and I can retire to the applause of a grateful nation.

You Americans have it right: Fixed term presidencies. You heave the buggers out before they have time to go completely nuts.

Comments

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Although as my father wisely pointed out fixed terms mean that they can plan exactly when to start doing noice things to get re elected.

Limited terms though I support wholeheartedly.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Whoops. Limited term was what I meant.

[archyena.livejournal.com]

The main problem with term limits, that in the second term the President can do anything he wants without ultimate political liability, is balanced by both the fact that the politics will shift towards simple opposition (not where we oppose because we disagree, but we oppose you because we don't like you) and there will be a tendency to punish the Vice President when he runs for President in the next round. A lot of people counter that there are statesmen like FDR, but then if you think about it, in his third and fourth terms he mostly spent his time gift wrapping Eastern Europe for the Soviets because he trusted Stalin for some unknown reason. It's worth noting that Truman affected an immediate turn in policy and relations as a response to Soviet dupliciity.