Disadvantages of consecutive presidential reelection: U.S. Example

Authors:
Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri and José Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net

Since Franklin D. Roosevelt -1933 - until now, any new U.S. President who has exercised his right to run for one consecutive reelection, always has reached a second term, with the sole exceptions of Jimmy Carter and George Bush senior.

If we convert this into a statistic, any U.S. president who is in his first term, has a 83% chance of being reelected for a second presidential mandate.

We might think that these candidates were efficient Presidents and, therefore, they were awarded with a second term. But it would be inconsistent to assume that so many different presidents, with different personalities, with different problems and in different times, have been so prominent successively to produce this high probability of being reelected in the United States.

In consequence, what these numbers show is that, in the United States, it is a tremendous advantage to be President and candidate at the same time. And this break the equal conditions that should exist in free elections, because who holds the nation's presidency has at his disposal special resources not available for their electoral opponents.

And this happens in a country like United States, where institutions work better than in most nations on the planet, and where consecutive presidential reelection is limited to only once.

Imagine then the Presidents-candidates' advantages in less developed countries and when consecutive presidential reelection has no limits.

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