I spent almost 30 mins (along with dictionary to solve this).
Some key words:
1. Fallout - adverse side effects of a decision.
2. Elective job - a job filled by election
3. Appointive job - a job filled by appointment.
4. Beleaguered situation - very difficult situation.
5. Endemic - regularly (or commonly) found
6. Rigidify - Make something inflexible
7. Determinacy - Quality of being certain
8. "millstone around the neck" - add another problem to choke.
9. "come home to roost" - someone's past bad things come back to bite.
Let's first understand the passage
Quote:
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.
Passage is about evaluating single six-year presidential term (S-Y PT)i.e. a president can have only one term.
- Currently in US a president can server max 2 terms. It was changed after Franklin D. Roosevelt is the only US president who server more than 2 terms.
Author: One point about S-Y PT is not much talked about.
That point is - S-Y PT (_This kind of constitutional limitation on elections_) is because of weak political parties.
Quote:
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.
This passage talks about one issue with S-Y PT
Line 1 - In S-Y PT, because there is no desire for re-election (you can't do it), there is safeguard against President mismanaging the office.
Line 2 - I didn't understand the meaning of it.
Line 3 - more unnecessary details.
Quote:
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.
This passage talks about another issue with S-Y PT
Line 2: S-Y PT are associated with corruption.
Line 1: S-Y PT are usually associated with country having weak political parties. However, this pattern itself is not that bad. However, the side-effects of this association is negative. Side-effect == corruption.
Line 3: details on why S-Y PT are corrupted
Quote:
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.
Continues talking about how one person making deal can be bad/corrupt. This is a very difficult situation
Line 1: S-Y PT - presidents don't do their job well.
Quote:
Observers, especially foreign observers, have often noted that one 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 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.
Observers - one weakness of American politics is election every 2 or 4 years. What's the weakness - didn't quite get
Summary however is - 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.
This means that S-Y PT will add another millstone (challenge to already bad system).