by Nick Tomboulides
A Harvard political scientist has written a new Op-Ed calling U.S. politicians hypocrites for criticizing the tenure of foreign leaders while allowing America to be run by career politicians and judges.
“While the U.S. government critiques the tenure of foreign officials, it should consider whether the principles it espouses are reflected in our country’s own procedures,” writes Zachary Kaufman, a a Senior Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
In making his case, Kaufman zeroes in on seven current or former members of Congress who were allowed to serve 50 years in office or more — noting two of them were “stopped only by death.”
U.S. Term Limits has covered this glaring inconsistency before, at a time when Obama administration officials — including a former five-term Senator — were praising the benefits of term limits abroad.
There is simply no excuse for the double standard. As Kaufman writes, “the United States should either reconcile what it practices and preaches (by adopting term limits for Congress and other offices) or refrain from hypocrisy.”
We couldn’t agree more.
