While many points are worth making in an evaluation of the single six- year presidential term, one of the most telling points against the single term has not been advanced. This kind of constitutional limitation on elections is generally a product of systems with weak or non-existent political parties.

Since there is no party continuity or corporate party integrity in such systems, there is no basis for putting trust in the desire for re-election as a safeguard against mismanagement in the executive branch. Better under those conditions to operate on the basis of negative assumptions against incumbents. I do not know if the earliest proposal for a single, nonrepeatable term was made in the 1820s because that was a period of severely weak political parties. But I do feel confident that this is a major reason, if not the only reason, that such a proposal has been popular since the 1940s.

Though the association of the non-repeatable election with weak political parties is not in itself an argument against the limitation, the fallout from this association does contribute significantly to the negative argument. Single-term limitations are strongly associated with corruption. In any weak party system, including the presidential system, the onus of making deals and compromises, both shady and honourable, rests heavily upon individual candidates. Without some semblance of corporate integrity in a party, individual candidates have few opportunities to amortize their obligations across the spectrum of elective and appointive jobs and policy proposals. The deals tend to be personalized and the payoffs come home to roost accordingly.

If that situation is already endemic in conditions of weak or non- existent parties, adding to it the limitation against re-election means that candidates and officials, already prevented from amortizing their deals across space, are also unable to amortize their obligations temporally. This makes for a highly beleaguered situation. The single six-year term for presidents is an effort to compensate for the absence of a viable party system, but it is a compensation ultimately paid for by further weakening the party system itself.

Observers, especially foreign observers, have often noted that one 35 source of weakness in American political parties is the certainty of election every two or four years, not only because any artificial limitation on elections is a violation of democratic principles but also because when elections are set in a certain and unchangeable cycle, political parties do not have to remain alert but can disappear into inactivity until a known 40 point prior to the next election. To rigidify matters by going beyond the determinacy of the electoral cycle to add an absolute rule of one term would hang still another millstone around the neck of already doddering political parties.

1. Suppose that America adopted a single-term political system. Considering the foreign observers mentioned in the passage. how would they be expected to respond to such a development?

A. They would endorse it because it further strengthens American democracy.
B. They would condemn it because it further limits American democracy.
C. They would neither endorse nor condemn it.
D. They would condemn it because it gives the President too much power.
E. They would endorse it because it will reduce corruption



2. According to the passage, which of the following is most likely to be true of a political system with weak political parties?

A. Politicians appoint unqualified people to important posts.
B. Political parties favour frequent elections.
C. Political bargains are made by individual candidates.
D. Elections tend to occur with very great frequency.
E. It encourages politicians to be more honest



3. Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the author‘s claim about single-term political systems?

A. The discovery that foreign observers like this system
B. The discovery that most politicians are honest
C. The discovery that Americans dislike this system
D. The discovery that parliamentary systems are more democratic
E. The discovery that politicians favour such a system