I wouldn't tinker with our system of government lightly, but there might be room for improvement. I'd feel better about it if any proposed idea could be tried it out in a couple of states--"the laboratories of democracy"--before we tried it nationally.

A related bundle of changes that add up to what it sounds like you want (and sounds good to me too) would be to borrow from the later versions of democracy worked out by Europeans. A parliamentary system would allow significant minorities to attain proportional representation, instead of being shut out completely by the two-party duopoly, or forced to compromise principles to fit into one of the two available categories. Most such systems also provide for a vote of no confidence to remove the current executive, which seems to combine the best aspects of our seperate methods of impeachment and recall elections.

I've been struck too by the way the Founders seemed to have "overlooked" removal for incompetence. But maybe it wasn't an oversight, but an assignment of responsibility. If an employer fires you for incompetence, that's not considered just cause, and thus doesn't preclude unemployment benefits, because the law's clear that it was the employer's responsibility to choose wisely in the first place. If you turn out to be incompetent, it's the employer's own damn fault. So maybe the same principle applies to officials who, in theory, work for us. If we the people pick badly, we can't blame anybody else.

That's kinda why I think that term limits are a chickenshit solution; like an alcoholic demanding prohibition. Instead of putting training wheels on democracy, I think we need to get better at picking our leaders.

Although I've been toying with an idea...may as well bring it up here, since I can't tie it to a specific news item [rueful ;-)]. The rationale for term limits is to negate the "incumbency advantage", but that's a rather drastic and terminal solution. A nuke when we need a scalpel. How about, instead, we apply an incumbency penalty to elections?

Like this: Election A, all candidates are political virgins, the usual rules apply whereby he who gets the most votes wins. Next election, B, when the winner of A is up for reelection, the counting rules are modified. Now the incumbent is hit with, say, a 2% penalty: He/she has to do 2% better than the next-closest winner to win. If the vote is 50% versus 48.1%, the one who got the 48.1% wins.

And so it goes, another 2% or whatever, added each time the incumbent goes for reelection. We might end up with a President For Life, but only if, a couple of decades into his/her reign, 90% of Americans give their consent.

Seems like it might work. Not so brutal as political capital punishment by term limit, and preserves our right to keep on electing somebody who we think's doing a good job. But as time goes on, the burden of proof threshold gets higher and higher. Wadda ya think?