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Notes -
sounds to me like we need different states to experiment with different term durations. Federal politics would change significantly if house terms are 3 years, senate 9 years, and president 6 years.
I’m not convinced anything less than 5 years is long enough. It’s extremely short when the buildup to the election takes about a year and then you need at least half as long again to raise the funds to run. That makes, at current, the term of the house members of 24 months with 18 months of “reelection related activities” and 6 months of everything else. 6/24 is 1/4 of the term with 3/4 for running for the next election. Make it 36 months, and you’ll only have half of the term for actually doing things. Make it 5 years and it’s 60 months, and thus 7/10 of the term is for doing things and 3/10 is devoted to winning office. At this point it’s long enough that you can’t simply be good at running, you have to get things done. And at 5 years, you have long enough lead times that the results of the changes you make are going to be known and thus affect your ability to win (imagine having the effects of taxes or tax cuts coming known before we voted on whether or not to re-elect the guy who voted for it). It’s also long enough that longer term projects with upfront costs (especially infrastructure projects) become plausible.
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