David Stockman has an article in the Sunday Times with a provocative and not entirely wrong analysis of America's problems followed by a strange suggestion for a solution. He writes:
All this would require drastic deflation of the realm of politics and the abolition of incumbency itself, because the machinery of the state and the machinery of re-election have become conterminous. Prying them apart would entail sweeping constitutional surgery: amendments to give the president and members of Congress a single six-year term, with no re-election; providing 100 percent public financing for candidates; strictly limiting the duration of campaigns (say, to eight weeks); and prohibiting, for life, lobbying by anyone who has been on a legislative or executive payroll. It would also require overturning Citizens United and mandating that Congress pass a balanced budget, or face an automatic sequester of spending.
It seems to me that the Constitution has created, in America, one of the most free and successful countries the world has ever known, and that shredding it as Mr. Stockman proposes is a reckless remedy. Some of our most successful presidents, such as Washington and Lincoln, were re-elected. The re-election can provide an incentive for presidents to do the right thing. Had President Clinton not been facing re-election, for example, it's unlikely that he would have signed welfare reform, which was one of his greatest accomplishments. The problem in Washington now isn't that politicians have too much accountability to the people through too frequent elections or too much worry about re-election; it's that they have not enough accountability. How would Mr. Stockman enforce his proposal "strictly limiting the duration of campaigns (say, to eight weeks)"? If a person who might eventually run for office is caught publicly criticizing an incumbent politician, or criticizing the government, does that count as campaigning? What is the punishment? Limiting the length of campaigns might only further empower those non-campaign organizations that have large lists of members and that operate permanently in a way that Mr. Stockman seems to find unhelpful, such as the AFL-CIO or Americans for Tax Reform. And while revolving-door lobbyists are a problem, Mr. Stockman's cure would shred the First Amendment's rights of petition and of speech. As he frames it, it sounds like anyone who was drafted and served in Vietnam, or who worked on a summer crew during college maintaining trails for the National Park Service, would be prevented from 20 or 30 years later petitioning Congress on some entirely unrelated issue, such as appropriations to fight AIDS in Africa.
What he's proposing is "sweeping," for sure, but it isn't constitutional "surgery," it's constitutional arson.