More on Term Limits, from Rick Pildes and Elizabeth Garrett

Rick Pildes and Elizabeth Garrett have written an outstanding post for Balkinization on the experience with term limits. They discuss the difficulties limits present for the experience and “time horizons” needed for effective legislative performance, one example (among others) being the crafting of budgets. They note that politicians remain politicians and that, barred from seeking additional years in one office, they devote their energies, with palpable effects on governance, to the next offices available to them.

(10/8/08) Read More

The Fate of Term Limits as Reform

The New York Times never liked term limits for the City and this is true now more than ever, when limits stand in the way of a third term for a "an effective and popular mayor." Michael Bloomberg now wants another term, his third. The Times agrees that he should have it, and Bloomberg is ready to spend hand-over-fist to win the term if the legal impediment can be removed.

(10/3/08) Read More

McCain and His Anger

Today George Will links McCain's brand of reformism with his temperament, and he does not judge favorably what this linkage has produced. "McCain Loses His Head," Washington Post (Sept. 23, 2008). "For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are 'corrupt' or 'betray the public's trust', two categories that seem to be exhaustive—there are no other people." This "Manichaean worldview" brought him, McCain, to McCain-Feingold, "his signal legislative achievement." Will reminds his readers that, in his own campaign this year, "his campaign is creatively finding interstices in laws intended to restrict campaign giving and spending."

(9/23/08) Read More

On Change in Presidential Primary Financing

Rick Hasen has posted a paper on preliminary observations about the changes in Presidential primary public financing. He notes that that further study may require adjustment in preliminary conclusions. But he examines the effect of bundling, all the greater with the larger contributions made possible by BCRA, and the impact of Internet fundraising among "micro-donors." After a discussion of the patterns we have seen in this transforming fundraising landscape, he attempts a normative judgment, with attention to the impact on the goals of greater equality and on the quality and attributes of the candidates who do well under these conditions.

(9/16/08) Read More

A Brief Editorial

Is all pre-election litigation over voting rights or election administrative matters the same? One strongly held view is that whatever the motives, and regardless of the objectives, the litigant’s obligation is at least to file earlier rather than later, minimizing voter confusion and taxpayer cost. Another, more of the realist kind, is that partisan actors will do as they wish, and we cannot separate out the good from the bad: the courts and eventually the voters will have to sort things out. “Politics is politics” is the hard notion behind this view which, stated another way, is that law in the middle of a political campaign is necessarily politicized, and this cannot be helped.

(9/15/08) Read More

Also...

"And I approved this message…." 9/10/08

Vice President 9/1/08

McCain and Attack Ads 8/27/08

Developments as the Federal Election Commission Prepares to Consider the McCain Case 8/20/08

The Research Battle in the Reform War 8/19/08

First Observations on the McCain Primary Matching Fund Case 8/15/08

The Wal-Mart Matter 8/14/08

The Center for Competitive Politics Answers on Public Financing, and Against It: and a Reply 8/12/08

Not Exactly “Honoring” Our Veterans: The VA and Its Policy on Voter Registration 8/11/08

The Center for Competitive Politics and the Case for and against Public Funding Programs 8/8/08