The Term Limit

Oh how I love when I'm inspired to write about something relevant to the original theme of this blog. Especially when it's about an undercover issue, as opposed to ones that I feel forced to address (The Penn State scandal, the Kardashian non-issue, Occupy --insert city here--). But as usual, I was doing a casual read-over of one of my favorite sites, Gawker, and saw this little ditty about Bill Clinton engaging in conversation about third, non-consecutive presidential terms: http://gawker.com/5857506/bill-clinton-let-presidents-serve-three-terms .

This got me thinking. I've always thought it was pretty cool that George Washington stepped down all those years ago, setting a precedent for presidents to not overstay their welcome. I've also long supported the widely endorsed notion that a lack of executive turn-over has led most of the world's corrupted nations into their corruption. And then of course, there's Joan Didion's quip that you really can stay too long at the fair. So, in theory, you could say I'm a believer in limited terms.

But after reading this cutesy Bill Clinton mention on Gawker, I couldn't help but let my mind wander to the question: which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Except... which comes first, the tyranny or the tyrannical leader? Or better yet: nature vs. nurture? Which creates tyranny: the nature of the government or the individual(s) that leads it? The political scientist in me wants to say there's an answer, but what many years of pondering what makes political entities what they are has taught me is that no matter how many numbers, correlations and historical accounts we take into consideration, there's really no knowing. We can only predict how a nation will turn out. We can't foresee it. So really, maybe there's something else there. Something between the chicken and the egg. Some matrix of nature vs. nurture.

So I ask you: which do you think comes first? The tyranny or the tyrannist? The nature of the government or the nature of the leader? Can it be defined? Or is this another thing that political scientists should throw into the "let's wait and see and define in retrospect" category?