We have had it with the political catchphrase, "stay the course." It is, in all sincerity, the most shortsighted, pigheaded, blatantly psychotic message that politicians can convey, particularly at this point in time, and yet it is the inevitable battle cry of every incumbent. We just saw a campaign ad the other day for New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, in which an announcer averred, "Now is not the time to go in a different direction." And, of course, the most inept American President to ever hold the office has used the "Stay the Course" speech on any number of occasions — usually after he's just made a huge mistake and violated another important American principle. Wasn't it just a few weeks ago that the Daily Show ran a yet another montage of Bush uttering such phrases over and over?

The worst part about that is: it seems to work. We know far too many otherwise intelligent people who fell for the "don't change horses mid-stream" ploy and voted for Bush in the 2004 election, despite grave misgivings about the man. Their stated justification? We shouldn't change presidents in the middle of a war. Bush, like any president, knew that a wartime Chief Executive is nearly always re-elected; our nation, by rewarding such bellicose thinking for the better part of 200 years, is actually encouraging our leaders to go to war whenever possible, since that practically guarantees them (or their party) another term. Hey, we can't suddenly switch tacks in the middle of a war...or a recession...or a period of political upheaval. Right?

Bullshit. The whole point of the rather clever system of government we've developed is to make sure that we do go in a different direction every few years. It enables us to avoid falling into the muck and mire of one ideological extreme or the other, and helps us actually make some forward progress. If you ask us, even two terms is too many for the presidential post, and congressmen and Supreme Court Justices should have a limited number and length of term, too. There is, frankly, no branch of government in which elected or appointed officials should have unlimited terms — or even particularly long ones.

We're quite happy to see that no less a personage than Thomas Jefferson agreed with us on the subject of limited terms of office:

I dislike, and strongly dislike... the abandonment in every instance of the principle of rotation in office and most particularly in the case of the President. Reason and experience tell us that the first magistrate will always be re-elected if he may be re-elected. He is then an officer for life.

Jefferson goes on to discuss some of the problems that arise from permanent emplacement in office, in terms of military demands, economics, foreign relations, the election process, and other spheres. He points out:

It may be said that if elections are to be attended with these disorders, the less frequently they are repeated the better. But experience says that to free them from disorder, they must be rendered less interesting by a necessity of change.

There's an age-old dilemma, illustrated humorously by the late Douglas Adams: anybody who wants to rule is by no means fit to rule. The structure of American government, in part, alleviates this problem by disallowing the perpetuity of any one person's reign. In other words, you're welcome to seek power — just know that you don't get to keep it.

We simply feel (and Jefferson seems to have agreed) that this caveat should apply to all three branches of government, rather than just the executive branch, and that it should be carried one logical step (in our opinion) forward to even more stringent limits. Are there potential problems with this proposed regulation? Certainly. Just as there are potential problems in the current process. In our opinion, the need to keep government — all government — fresh, dynamic and adaptable outweighs the possible abuses of such a system. Come on, folks — can you imagine forty freaking years with Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court? Heck, do you think Clarence Thomas deserves even one more year?

Jefferson was also pretty prescient:

If once [a president is] elected, and at a second or third election outvoted by one or two votes, he will pretend false votes, foul play, hold possession of the reins of government, be supported by the States voting for him, especially if they are the central ones lying in a compact body themselves and separating their opponents; and they will be aided by one nation of Europe while the majority are aided by another...

Hmm. That sounds familiar. We just can't quite put a finger on it.

Of course, the whole "stay the course" myth is even more ludicrous when it's George W. Bush who keeps saying it — when, clearly, there is most definitely plenty wrong with the course he's leading us on. And with an approval rating hovering somewhere in the high-30s, we're certainly not alone in our assessment. Economically, industrially, environmentally, scientifically, technologically, culturally, legislatively, militarily, diplomatically — just about every facet of government responsibility has gone down the tubes with this administration. And he wants us to "stay the course"? What an asshole.

In all due respect, what the hell else is Bush going to say? Seriously. I've thought about this rant since it's been posted and pardon me, but I'm struck dumb. Bush has taken a shit on the United States. Here's an idea: He shouldn't say anything. Please. He should just shut the hell up and hope the inequities of his administration fade quietly. In the meantime, he should get a nice, neutral colored paint inside the White House and wait for a guy like, I dunno, maybe Evan Bayh to move in. An intelligent Democrat having success in a (sshh!) red state. The only person better off under the presidency of George Bush is the guy that plays him on Saturday Night Live.

Yikes. You guys really hate Bush, eh?

If we fucked up on the job as badly as Bush has, the last thing we'd be saying is that we should "stay the course." Fucking up like Bush has is bad enough; but trying to say that, with the country so fucked up, we should keep going in the same fucked up direction — that's just insulting. We'd at least have a modicum of respect for this idiot if he'd be a man and admit his mistakes. Instead, he's a lying little weasel; we don't have respect for those.

Again, this doesn't shock us — we've come to expect this kind of shit from Bush and from politicians in general. It just pisses us off.

Grendel — Damn, we were trying to remain impartial. What gave us away?

Clarence Thomas dissented in both Kelo v New London and Gonzales v Raich. Can't be all bad.

My pet reform for the Supreme Court would be to take away the lottery aspect by allowing one appointment (or a fixed number) every four years, regardless of the number of deaths or resignations. The size of the Court would then fluctuate, but so what? It has varied in the past from six to ten.

Thomas was on the sane side in both Raich and Kelo, no doubt about that (those two cases made for strange bedfellows). But from our perspective, it's more a case of the sun even shining on a dog's ass sometimes. Thomas' general "judicial approach" to cases is, in short, pretty fucked up, but that doesn't mean that we never agree with the decision that said approach leads to.

Not at all a bad idea on SCOTUS nominations. The change we've been toying with is somewhat fixed terms as opposed to lifetime appointments. We were toying with a maximum of two eight-year terms, with the ability after one eight-year term for the president plus 2/3 of Congress to vote out a sitting justice. That way, if there was truly a sense that a justice was off his or her rocker, they would be gone after eight-years, and no justice would sit more than sixteen years.

Basically, though, anything that would avoid the terrible situation we are in right now in which a president as poor as Bush gets to nominate at least two justices to lifetime appointments is a viable option in our minds.

with the ability after one eight-year term for the president plus 2/3 of Congress to vote out a sitting justice.

The remedy of impeachment already exists, with a burden lower than that. Judges are sometimes removed that way though I don't know if it has ever been attempted against a SCJ. (Then there was the time Lincoln tried to have the CJ arrested for insisting on habeas corpus ...)

Our thought was for more of a mandatory review after the first term as opposed to needing a call for impeachment. Basically, after eight years, if the President gives the thumbs down, it goes to the Senate for a vote. If he gives the thumbs up, the justice continues for eight more years. Of course, at any time impeachment is still an option.

That said, it is pretty similar to the impeachment vote, as you said. Frankly, we weren't thinking about impeachment when we wrote about this system, so the fact that the vote was the same (minus the Presidential support) was just a coincidence.

Maybe a mix of the two proposals would work best, though. Perhaps term limits coupled with even spacing for appointments and a mandatory review (with the possibility of impeachment intact) would be the best way to go. Lifetime appointments don't sit well with us, nor does the fact that Bush got two appointments and has basically shaped the court for many years to come.

The point of lifetime appointment is to immunize one of the branches against passing passions; with the flaw, of course, that some presidents get lucky (which my scheme ameliorates). Is there a better way?

It will be interesting to see what happens to our institutions when science defeats aging. My guess is that "lifetime" will be retconned to mean 60 years for some purposes, 120 for others. Though that won't suffice here because the Constitution doesn't say "lifetime" for judges, it says "during good behavior". Is it "bad behavior" to cling too firmly to an understanding of the Constitution that a judge swore to preserve? Well, if the Constitution has been amended, perhaps the oldest judges ought to go out with the old law.

The other flaw of lifetime appointments is that it can lock in loons for far too long. For example, when Scalia makes it clear that he believes that atheists don't have the same rights as those with religious beliefs, we certainly don't think he should continue to sit on the court until he retires or dies. Just think about Roberts, who is exceedingly young for a SCOTUS member — if he turns out to be a loon like Scalia (we're not saying he will be), we could be stuck with him for thirty-plus years. For us, sixteen years is plenty. But of course there are problems with any system of choosing justices, it's just a matter of minimizing those problems as much as possible.

Yeah, that "bad behavior" language is a strange fish. It's way too subjective to have any real meaning, and as such it's damned near useless. What we consider "bad behavior," others may consider perfectly appropriate. As long as there's some form of argument that shows how a justice is upholding the Constitution, it's pretty hard to say that they aren't doing their job.

That's true about the scientific march against aging — there will have to come a time when "lifetime" appointments are revisited. People are already living a lot longer than they were two hundred years ago, so where do we draw the line to go back and redefine what we mean? Interesting.