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Originally Posted by atari 2600
The long-term solution is really rather simple. Well, it's simple in its elegance of formulation, but rather difficult to execute due to obvious inherency issues. But it is a solution that fixes a broken America. Either institute iron-clad campaign finance reform across the board to clean-up politics (and keep term limits as they are), or just add an amendment prohibiting repeat terms of office and putting an end to career politicians for good. If people fail to get behind this key aspect of addressing change and instead fall (once again) for splintering off in a thousand different directions expending their energies trying to fix a thousand different problems, then they play right into the control's hands, and nothing will ever get done and nothing will change. People seem to have real mental difficulty when it comes to correctly assessing what the real priority is and what the root of all of our problems is, namely, political corruption based on greed and/or vested interest in a political "career."
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I agree with most of this, especially the putting in place of campaign fund caps. However I fail to see how a prohibition on repeat terms of office would have that big an impact on halting the concept of the career politician. Of course, if we take the term literally then yes, it would, but Government office is, as we know, a significant stepping stone to gaining lucrative positions on influential corporate boards. As such, regardless of whether a politician is able to serve one or more terms, the likelihood of them being given such a post after their period of office is extremely high.
This fluid transfer from the political to the corporate sphere is I believe the single most damaging factor in Western government today. Obviously the simple answer would be to prohibit ex politicians from such boards, but the logistical problem of trying to achieve such a thing makes it highly unlikely.
Too much of old revolutionary thinking was built around easy (read meaningless) notions like ''oppression'. However, as I think Atari suggests, it is indeed to the reciprocal relay of business and government resulting in a tight web of vested interest that should provide the real focus for anybody seriously interested in addressing today's crises.