Now that the election is over....

time for one of the most important parts of the Centrist Party's proposed platform.

A Constitutional amendment to change the term of the Presidency. 

The time has come to change things so that the President is elected to one term of six years, and that anyone who ascends to the presidency by succession can serve no more than a total of nine years.  That way if a President dies in office or becomes incapacitated, whoever takes over for them can serve either more than one-half term only, or less than that amount but can run for re-election.

We lose too much time and too much of the focus of our nation's leader during a period of almost two years during their first term in office, when they begin the campaign for re-election.  As the election draws closer, more and more of their time is spent campaigning rather than leading the nation.  By making the office theirs for a single term, several things are accomplished.

1.  A President can take any action they feel is required while in office without having to consider whether or not it will come back to haunt them at the ballot box in a re-election bid.  Tough choices that might be avoided, postponed or watered down can be tackled head-on by the nation's Chief Executive.

2.  We won't have situations like we had in this campaign cycle where President Obama told the Russian President to wait until he'd secured re-election before he could do whatever it was he was being asked to do.

3.  Ideally, the incumbent will avoid most campaigning,  although they would certainly endorse their party's nominee.  A President should be in the White House, doing their job.  Or outside of the White House, doing their job.  Nowhere in the Constitution is anything written about how much of the President's time should be spent in pursuit of re-election, or choosing their successor.

This idea accomplishes other things that are positive.  One is that we won't see elections where more than $1 billion is spent to elect a president every four years.  If we see those every six years instead, in the first quarter-century of this new system there will have been only four elections at $1.5 billion, or a total of $6 billion spent on the Presidency.  Under the present system, there would have been six elections at the same amount of money, meaning this will avoid spending $3 billion every 25 years.  Not a lot of money but it is money that could be better spent elsewhere.

This should apply only to the Presidency.  There should be no limit on how many years someone can serve as Vice President.