Talking about "real life screwing up things that are really important," Term Limits is one of those things.
On the one hand, it limits the time that an incompetent Politician can stay in office. However, the BEST regulator of that ought to be the voters, themselves.
Which leads us to the other hand: It limits the time that the very rare, truly effective Politician can stay in office. It removes from the electorate the CHOICE to let a government official hold his job.
The problem is that many times these guys come in and are very good. They have fresh ideas and ideals. When they are there for too long they begin compromising those ideals. No matter what side of the scale you are on you can name someone who has been in too long but they bring in plenty of Pork so they keep getting elected. Sen. Robert Byrd is a prime example of this. He was a Grand Wizard of the KKK however because he keeps bringing home money for West Virginia, he keeps getting another term.
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It didn't take term limits to make sure that no Governor of the State of New York has EVER served more that three consecutive terms. It merely took voters.
[sarcasm]No, it took a bunch of hookers this time. [/sarcasm]
[sarcasm]I'm sure people believe that the Country was RUINED because FDR was elected four times to the Presidency.[/sarcasm] But fear (by Republicans, at the time) lead to a Constitutional Amendment defining Presidential Term Limits.
Actually many people believe that FDR made alot of things happen that have led to what LBJ did, which caused our modern welfare dependancy state. The main difference between then and now however is that back then the opposing party when a war was going on, did not undermine the war effort or try to destroy the president in office. By the way, wasn't it FDR that placed Japanese Americans in interment camps? Can you imagine if President Bush tried something like that with Muslims or Arab-Americans?
And lucky for us Democrats, the next time it might have been applied required a very popular (but history will show, a domestically DISASTROUS) Presidency to come to an end after eight years. History will show that it was good ol' Ronald Reagan, Democracy Cheerleader, Bringer-Down of the Berlin Wall, who divided this country into the lower-to-middle class and the Upper-to-Super Upper class, and set the machinery in motion to expand and widen that chasm.
So now, thanks to Reaganomics, and the mindset those policies encouraged: Savings-and-Loans have been looted; Corporations are raided (if not out-and-out stolen from, with the "proceeds" hidden in phantom transactions with phantom corporations), and businesses, instead of working for their profit, and keeping a community in good employ and secure standing, are dismantled piece-by-piece for the benefit of the shareholders, whose holding are only a piece of their entire portfolio. What GOOD does it do?
But this is what happens when we let rich people run the country for the benefit of rich people.
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You can hate on Ronald Reagan all you want but during his time in office the economy was about the strongest it has ever been, and that was quite a feat after the truly disastrous Presidency of Jimmy Carter, and the fact that he had an almost completely Democratic Congress during his Presidency.
The president does not control buisiness, nor should he. If a buisiness does something, they should suffer the consequences, but the government needs to stay out of the private sector unless the companies break the law.
As far as rich people running the country, unfortunately it seems that if you do not have millions and millions of dollars to spend on campaining you can't get voters attention. It takes so much money to get a public office that most idealists and people with fresh ideas have to sell out to contributers and special interests before they can even get into office. By the time a politician has been there a few terms they have the whole process of selling out down to a science.
