term limits and self-awareness

Jacinda Ardern again bucks trends

This afternoon news broke that the relatively popular, outspoken, and successful New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will not seek reelection but will voluntarily leave office by 7 February, less than three weeks from now. I saw no detailed explanation for the choice.

There could be a raft of reasons that are negative but we have not heard them. She is not resigning today nor waiting until after a successor is chosen (cue the painful Boris BoJo Johnson saga in the United Kingdom from July through early September 2022). It appears that Ms. Ardern is serving her term, then returning to some other position in life than de facto head of state (not to be confused with King Charles who is still nominally de jure head of state). Late in 2022 she had indicated she would pursue another term but reversed that decision without any obvious external pressures.

Wow. I mean wow.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi ran for that office on and off between 1994 and 2019 apparently seeing himself solely capable of governing the country. His various terms presented mixed policy results before he was banned for running for office through 2019.

One of the major planks upon which Republicans built the 1994 mid-term House election victory charged that Democrats has been in power too long to know the country. The Democrats had indeed led the House of Representatives between the Eisenhower and Clinton administrations, though they had been elected by those same voters the Republicans were concerned about. House Speaker Thomas Foley of Washington lost his seat during the 1994 bloodbath in an absolutely spectacular upset. Foley’s opponent, Representative George Nethercutt, won election proudly promising that he would serve only three terms. Nethercutt then changed his mind and served beyond that, much as Democrats had done.

In 2004, the Senate Majority Leader similarly lost his seat. The Senator had served in the House for four terms before assuming his Senate seat in 1986. Dashle’s successor, John Thune, now enters his twenty-ninth year of service in the Senate.

In today’s U.S. Senate, Senator Patrick Leahy, aged 83, stepped down this winter after 48 years’ service for the people of Vermont. Senators Dianne Feinstein, Iowan Chuck Grassley, and Minority Leader Mitt McConnell, all in their 80s, remain in place as aging politicians of many decades’ endurance. Feinstein is attracting a challenger for a 2026 reelection should she decide to run again as Grassley did in winning his eighth term in 2022 as his age approaches 90. None of these Senators have adopted Ardern’s approach.

The preference to continue running repeatedly in politics is not unique to the United States; ultimately democracies depend on voters’ decisions. We tend to think of dictatorships as having exceptionally long-running regimes where the citizens don’t get a role too often in authoritarian states. But, it’s most often losing an election which sends a politician home rather than a decision to leave voluntarily when relatively young (Ms. Ardern is 43 with a young daughter) and relatively highly popular.

We may find that something else has happened forcing her from office rather than her sole decision. As I note, we only heard this afternoon.

Ms. Ardern’s decision is a refreshing act. It’s also healthy for democracy. It’s also what we have learned to expect from Ms. Ardern over the years. She has proven a most interesting global figure.FIN