The last two years of a two term Presidency tend to be unsuccessful due to lame duck status and excessive concern about legacy rather than problem solving. Conversely, the first two years tend to be an expensive learning process filled with mistakes. Isn't it unrealistic to expect an entirely new Executive Branch to be up and running in less than three months after the election?
What if we limited the Presidency to a single six year term, with the election occurring two years before taking office? The President-elect could even take over as Vice President and would have time to prepare for a smooth transition and fully functioning government on Day One of his term in office.
What say you?
We used to have a longer period between election and inauguration, but the transition following the 1932 election was so chaotic that the Twentieth Amendment (1933) switched the beginning of a presidential administration and a congress from March 3 to January 20. Previously there had also been a bad experience with the last months of the Buchanan administration in 1860-1. I would think that if multi-billion dollar corporations can execute a merger in 60-90 days, the government ought to be able to transition administrations.
That said, I think that viable presidential candidates should have a transition team in place and further down the road than they do now. The big issue here is that there has not been enough time to fully vet even cabinet appointments and the results have been embarrassing. How long should it really take to find an Attorney General who has paid taxes on their domestic help?
I'm not sure I want an incoming president spending much time on nominations, after the major policy posts are filled. There are better things to do than decide who is the most politically advantageous person to be Secretary of Transportation.
There is another consideration; with the Twentieth Amendment there is a more severe time limit on election disputes, as we found out in 2000. My solution would be to for Congress to simply enact a law forbidding federal courts for hearing disputes in federal elections. The Constitution already has a procedure for this and it has worked pretty well. Each house of Congress is the ultimate judge of its own election results and presidential elections go to the House, VP to the Senate. It's an imperfect system (look at 1876), but I think it performs better in this regard than the Supreme Court did. And this is not the kind of thing that gets better by dragging it out.
New administrations are on a learning curve and I see no way around that. Giving an administration a six-year term (presumably single) makes it a lame-duck from day one. Governments with successful longer term presidents tend to have parliamentary systems where a government can be changed by a vote of no confidence. Would you really have wanted to be stuck with six years of Jimmy Carter?
I think having a President in waiting for two years would be a disaster. Who would speak for the United States in foreign policy?
But I give you credit for raising a good issue and interesting solutions. Well done!
