to those in the usa...
 

Is 4 years too shor for an election term?

In the UK its about 5 years.

4 years seems very short. By the time the chap unpacks his bags, its election time.

4 is long enough

I think it would work better if they split the difference and made it one 6 year term - with no possibility of a second term. The way it is, you basically lose the last year of a first term president to reelection campaigning and the fear of doing anything to jeopardize their chances. But the system is way more broken than just that...

It's only 5 years in the UK now that the Government has moved to fixed terms. Previously they could hold it after 4 years if they wanted to.

We aren't talking dog years here are we ?? :arcadefre

honestly, If you took over a company that was failing how long would it take you to turn it around and implement what you want to do? Couple of years? How can 4 years be long enough to turn around the United States? To be stabilized in 4 years seems right, another 4 years would show the fruits of that labor. I cannot imagine being able to right a 300 million person ship in less than 4 years.

In my country is 5 years too and no possibility of reelection. Longer than that seems too much.

I thought the rule in the UK was 5 years maximum, and the Government could announce an election at any time, thus giving them an unfair advantage. So when a party won with a narrow margin, it would hold another election if and when it had risen in popularity, in order to increase its majority.

Interestingly, Winston Churchill, your most famous leader who is an icon to right-wing nutjobs in the US, was Prime Minister twice in Britain, despite being so unpopular there that he never actually won an election.

In 1940 he became Prime Minister without an election, and in 1951 he became Prime Minister again, despite receiving almost 2 million fewer votes than his opponent, who he had also lost to in 1945.

It isn't always an advantage. Where I live the party won a narrow minority, now if they cannot form government they will be forced to call another election because otherwise we will spend 4 years like the US of parties not wanting to work together and wasting everyone's time.

The problem in the US is not the term length, it's that there are no restrictions on campaigning. In the UK, isn't there a law that candidates can only spend like 150k of their own money and they can't be on TV ads or something like that?

4 or 5 is Ok. Lifetime is not.. our congress and senate should be overhauled as to term limits. They sit there with a 6% approval rating and just keep it rolling.

What country, or what electoral system? I don't believe proportional representation is perfect, but it's a lot better than our system, which is 'one more party than Nazi Germany'.

(And that's if you consider them two distinct parties; they're really just two brand names with the same, single owner.)

Under PR your vote is counted.

I agree...there should definitely be a cap on campaign spending. And these super PACS shielding donors and the ridiculous amount of money that they generate is beyond questionable. I think if you take multiple terms off of the table, term length becomes far less of a problem.

Politics in the US has become a career. That's the problem.

Dvtimes clockwork.