We The People -- only need you for one term, thanks...

Cross posting from a comment I made on friend's Facebook wall post:

Brian's got a point - we waste a lot of services to keep stupid people alive -- unfortunately, they're probably the same stupid people who are voting the tea bag way. Ben's got a point that people don't want to spend money that they worked hard to earn on things they don't see as valuable. Government doesn't appear valuable because they suck at doing things efficiently. If we can improve their efficiency, we'd have a lot easier time to justify paying their salaries and expenses.

The problem with the tea-heads is that they think all government is evil and that the Constitution prohibits all forms of government not explicitly called out by the framers. Couple things wrong with that assertion --

1. It has nothing to do with any local, state or non-Federal government. That's up to the state Constitutions and local government bylaws and guidelines. A locality can't say it's okay to murder, but they can say "We're not going to charge you taxes to live here." They wouldn't survive, because taxes are a necessity, but they could theoretically say that.

2. The framers wrote the Constitution 224 years ago. We've made a few revisions since then, many of them valuable ones, clarifying the intent of what our society believes is right. "Giving" women the right to vote should have been in the original document, but society at the time didn't think they were competent to the task. That was obviously an error in judgement. Why would we think that other errors in their judgement didn't exist? Why do we hold this document up as infallible, when we've got clear evidence it had bugs?

3. The image that most tea-heads have of government is an "us-vs-them" mentality. Government is of the people and by the people, remember? Those idiots up there running "government?" They were working at the office down the street last week. Remember that those government incompetents in office (all public governments in the US) were elected by the people. If the people really thought they were doing the job that poorly, they could replace them, even mid-term if necessary. The problem is that we've built up this image that politiicans need to be political and need to serve more than one term. If we could get our public servants to serve us for a single term, focus all their energy on solving problems and not on getting re-elected, getting their friends elected (while in office), etc., we'd be able to really get the people who were interested in taking time to get the thing done right. Imagine, for instance, if you didn't have to worry about what you were doing to do when your term came up -- that you didn't have to spend time and effort fund-raising, smearing your opponents, etc.; that you could focus on doing the job at hand and answering only for the body of work that you put out, not the life that you lived for the 40 years before you got into office. Great examples of this: who thinks that anything Strom Thurmond, Robert Byrd, Ted Stevens or Joe Biden did in their last days in office was their best work? Did they accomplish a few things? Sure. Were they fired up to get the will of the people done? Eh, not so much. They wanted to stay in power. Why would we have someone doing the same job for 51 years (Byrd) when he wasn't even able to read the legislation the last few years of his life? Why would we allow them to shape the future of our country?

It's time to get the future out of the hands of a few old grumpy men and women (Nancy Pelosi? Get outta here!) It's time to return to people who don't want to spend their lives consumed with the need to stay in power and in charge. George Washington wasn't necessarily a great man, but he had a great idea of service -- serve the Country and the greater good for a little while and get out. Abe Lincoln was nervous as hell when we got elected President -- and with good reason, as he had a pretty rough road to walk. The road right now is equally rough (albeit for different reasons) -- we need to find someone who will take on the task and then go home. I think all political office should be for a single term; there are plenty of people who are capable of running for and excuting the various political offices. For those who say there's a need for continuity -- continuing what? Bad polcy-making, bad power-grabbing, greed and other evils? Why? If we really need continuity in office, cascade the terms of related offices and have each change of office include a period of time for transition where the incumbent keeps the office and authority for the first half while training the new occupant, then switch for the other half. People do this in corporate America all the time -- CEOs (arguably much more difficult a transition than most political offices), VPs, Chair of the Board, etc.

If we want to eliminate the waste and fluff from government, we've got to stop people from focusing on the short-term -- and the only way I can see to do that is get them stop focusing on themselves, their careers and their cronies and to focus on what WE THE PEOPLE need. What say ye?