Blue Mass Group

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Rather be a one-term President???

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Has any other president ever said they'd rather be a one term president before?

“I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president,” he told ABC's “World News” anchor Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview today.

I am pretty confident that all presidents have said they don't want to be mediocre presidents, they'd rather be really good presidents.   But usually, the really good presidents are two-term presidents, and the mediocre ones are one term.  Granted, public opinion can be mixed, many people would say Carter was much better than Reagan, etc.  But that's not the objective opinion of the majority of Americans.  It seems to me that desiring to go against the wishes of the American people is grounds for impeachment.  He's basically saying, now that I am in office, I am going to do whatever I want, to hell with what the majority of Americans want.  I guess he has the right to say that, since he was elected, but why wait three years, let's impeach the traitorous usurper now, so he can be a super great quarter-term president.

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  1. Too many pols do their jobs with nothing in mind but their next election.  Sometimes the right thing is not necessarily the most popular thing.  When that’s the case, doing the right thing means risking a loss at the next election.  So good for him for saying this.

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    p>As for your impeachment theory, well, that’s silly.

    • … of the problems with timid Dems in DC.  The point of having a majority is so you can use it.  Being paranoid about keeping prevents it’s primary use.

        • … machine is designed to ensure outcomes, not unity.  When they were in power, whenever there was a doubt about an outcome, the issue was never allowed to come up for a vote.  When it did come up for a vote, internal dissent was tolerated (even encouraged for those Rs in less Red Districts) as long as the final vote count assured the outcome.  Remember the one time they miscalculated, they held the vote open for three hours so they could strong-arm at the margins.  The result is that to any extent that a GOP Senator or Congressman can be said to be independent, they can only be so as long as it doesn’t matter.  In this way they’ve neutered the internal disagreements they have.

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          p>More here.

          • …they DID get things done.  It seems like they do come together faster and if THEY were in power and THEY for example wanted a public option on health care, that bill would have hit the President’s desk a long time ago.

            • They got things done because they don’t suffer crises of conscience.  They don’t suffer crises of conscience because their mode of operating doesn’t allow any potential crisis to get in the way of getting what’s on the table done (thus it never becomes a crisis).

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              p>So why are they able to get things done?  For one thing, the lack of success of GOP ranks that wanted to depart from the mission does much to keep people in line.  Anything they wanted to do but couldn’t simply wasn’t really attempted.  In this way the ‘chinks in the armor’ never really show, and that also serves to keep people in line.  SS reform being the most obvious example of something they wanted to accomplish but decided to never let it come up for a vote.  

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              p>It should also be noted that their’s is the easy job.  They have largely abstained from the work of actual governance.  This makes the goals that they do have easier.  

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              p>An old comment from another thread:

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              p>

              Self described conservative John Dean:

              If I could turn on a blinking red light to catch a reader’s attention, to give him a heads=up to alert him to pay attention, I would place it next to the following observations of political scientist Alan Wolfe:* “Political parties expend the time and grueling energy to control government for different reasons,” he explained, viewing politics with his wide-angle lens.

              Liberals, while enjoying the perquisites of office, also want to be in a position to use government to solve problems.  But conservatives have different motives for wanting power.  One is to prevent liberals from doing so; if government cannot be made to disappear, at least it can be prevented from doing any good.  The other is to build a political machine in which business and the Republican Party can exchange mutual favors; business will lavish cash on politicians (called campaign contributions) while politicians will throw the money back at business (called public policy).  Conservatism will always attract its share of young idealists.  And young idealists will always be disillusioned by the sheer amount of corruption that people like Gingrich and DeLay generate.  If yesterday’s conservative was a liberal mugged by reality, today’s is a free-marketer fattened by pork.

              …

              I have taken little joy in writing this book.  Frankly, I once believed Republicans would be good at governing.  But I was wrong: They have demonstrated that they can only rule for limited periods.  As used in the pages that follow, “governing” is a craft, a skill, even an art; it is an effort to find common rules under which all can pursue happiness; “ruling,” by contrast, is merely reigning and exercising power.

              *Alan Wolfe, a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, is a professor of political science and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, and a Prolific Author.

              (Link to Alan Wolfe added from Dean’s end notes.)

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              p>So, they suffer no crisis of conscience because they never let the variation of individual views become a problem for their goals and this is made easier because their goals are mostly easy to begin with.

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              p>Being out of power makes thing different, of course, but it also opens up the ability to profess beliefs you don’t really have toward the goal of merely being problematic for the other side.  When you know you can’t accomplish your goals, then your goal is just to stop the other guy.  And when there are no real expectations for you to accomplish anything, being obstructionist becomes a very easy goal.  

              • I had to read it from your “comments” list, though. The indentations in the thread made it tough going.

    • President Nixon in his interesting and relevant speech about crossing the border to attack the North Vietnamese in Cambodia:

      Whether my party gains in November is nothing compared to the lives of 400,000 brave Americans fighting for our country and for the cause of peace and freedom in Vietnam. Whether I may be a one-term President is insignificant compared to whether by our failure to act in this crisis the United States proves itself to be unworthy to lead the forces of freedom in this critical period in world history. I would rather be a one-term President and do what I believe is right than to be a two-term President at the cost of seeing America become a second rate power and to see this Nation accept the first defeat in its proud 190-year history.

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      p>The distinction is he was putting his responsibility for the lives of soldiers ahead of achieving domestic policy goals, even though apparently that decision would be unpopular.  I don’t think it’s traitorous for a president to put his duties as Commander in Chief ahead of being able to set the domestic agenda, but Obama seems to be doing it the other way around.

  2. I would rather have a President or a Governor willing to lead, taking the risk that not everything he (or she) does will be popular, than elect leaders who simply follow… meaning making decisions based on polling. I would rather have our leaders institute good policy and then fight like hell to ensure they win re-election, than play it safe and not have to fight as hard. Democrats who take those risks are going to lose some elections. But we are more likely to lose elections if, as we’ve seen recently, we just sit back and don’t really do anything risky.

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    p>As Democrats, where I think we have the most room to grow (to put it diplomatically) is in how our Presidents, Governor, Senators communicate their leadership. Every day it feels like good or almost-good policy gets buried under a pile of Republican frames. So Barack Obama can institute a tax cut for 95% of Americans as part of the stimulus, Republicans can vote against that tax cut for 95% of Americans, but somehow Scott Brown is the big “tax cut hero” because he wants the top 5% to get their break too. How did Democrats lose that issue?

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    p>Communications is a part of leadership. And I’d like to think we can do better.

    • I agree with President Obama’s statement in broad principle but I would argue they are few good one term Presidents I can think of that were able to accomplish all that much. Polk accomplished quite a bit in one term, but not all of it was good, and while I like those Mexican territories seizing them was an unconstitutional and immoral war of opportunity used primarily to extend the life of slavery. All bad things IMO.

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      p>Adams arguably had a productive first term creating a Navy and all but the XYZ Affair and Alien and Sedition Acts push him down.

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      p>Frankly Bush 41 might be the best example, a quick and easy war with international support, overseeing peaceful dismantling of USSR, passing some landmark domestic legislation (Americans with Disabilities Act, re-extending the Civil Rights and Voting Acts, S-Chip, and courageously raising taxes to balance the budget).

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      p>Yet even that is a stretch. I think it is quite difficult for a President to leave a good mark on history in just one term.

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      p>Secondly, I think it is important to consider your re-election and to make decisions that are broadly politically popular and wise. I would hate to have a President governing by the polls, but I would want a President that understands what the people want and expect of him. Case in point, both George W. Bush and Deval Patrick live in bubbles where they have no idea just how angry and upset the people are, don’t care about their free falling poll numbers, and seem to be indifferent to what the people actually want. And it did not bode well for Dubya going into 06 and won’t bode well for Patrick going into 10.

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