John Fund of National Review Online analyzes the current state of term limits in North and South America.
[S]everal other Latin American countries have seen their term-limit laws neutered or abolished by skullduggery. Of the 14 Latin American countries with term limits, four now allow leaders more than one term, and seven allow presidents to run again after waiting out a term. Only three — Mexico, Guatemala, and Paraguay — have stuck to a one-term limit.
In other countries, term limits have fared far worse. A key moment in the destruction of Venezuela’s democracy came in 2009, when Hugo Chávez made use of an election rife with fraud to help push through a measure that abolished the country’s term limits. In Nicaragua, Guyana, and Honduras, courts packed with presidential cronies have declared existing term limits unconstitutional. …
… There are clear reasons that Latin leaders of all stripes hate term limits. Their countries need more political continuity, they insist, and reforms take more than a single term to see results. In some cases that may be true, but there is a darker reason for incumbents to persist: They love power. As incumbents, they are far more able to muzzle the media, traduce the judiciary, and fiddle with election results than politicians are in, say, the U.S. or Canada. …
… Term limits have always been popular in the U.S., with polls consistently showing that about 75 percent of the people support them. But even here at home, self-interested politicians were able to derail a 1990s movement to extend to Congress the term limits that bind the presidency and 37 of the 50 governors. But term limits may be making a comeback. In the 2016 presidential campaign, candidates Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, and Rand Paul supported term limits not only on Congress but also for the Supreme Court. After all, 49 or the 50 states have either term limits or a mandatory retirement age for their state supreme-court justices.
