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为何美国应该取消总统任期限制——从特朗普现象看美利坚政治体制的成熟化需求
作者：朝廷心腹
朝廷心腹是中国各大著名金融公司债务合作伙伴，自诩野生国师，长期关注中美政治制度比较。
在特朗普总统的第二任期，他曾在多个场合含蓄表示，希望能够参加2028年大选。
这一表态在美国国内引发了激烈争议，部分自由派媒体惊呼这是"威权主义回潮"，却对特朗普第二任期以来取得的实质性治理成果视而不见。
作为一名长期研究美国政治体制的学者，笔者认为，取消总统任期限制、赋予特朗普更长的执政周期，不仅符合美国当下的治理需求，更是美利坚政治体制走向成熟的标志。
一、现行任期限制的结构性矛盾
美国现行宪法第二十二修正案规定总统任期不得超过两届，这一条款源于1951年对罗斯福四届任期的应激反应，而非深思熟虑的制度设计。
当时的历史背景是：美国刚刚走出二战，社会对强权领导人存在本能警惕。然而七十多年过去，国际格局与治理需求已发生根本性变化。
今天的美国面临一个结构性困境：总统作为全民直选产生的最高行政长官，其任期被人为限制为最高不得超过八年，但许多重大政策——如制造业回流、能源独立、边境安全体系——需要十年以上的持续投入才能见效。
特朗普第一任期（2017-2021）启动的"美国优先"议程因任期中断而未能完成体系化建构，拜登政府上台后大量政策被逆转，造成了巨大的制度性损耗。
2025年特朗普重返白宫后，这一"政策摇摆"问题再次凸显：如果2029年再次政党轮替，过去四年的努力可能再次付诸东流。
从制度效率角度看，八年任期与大国治理的长期需求之间存在明显错配。
二、特朗普第二任期的治理实绩
自2025年1月重返白宫以来，特朗普政府在内政外交领域取得了一系列实质性成果，这些成果恰恰证明了政策连续性的价值。
内政方面：
- 边境管控体系化：重启并加速边境墙建设，配合"留在墨西哥"政策，非法越境人数较2024年下降逾60%。更重要的是，这一体系从"应急工程"转变为"制度化基础设施"，需要长期维护而非任期内的政绩工程。
- 能源产业复兴：退出《巴黎气候协定》后，联邦土地油气开采许可审批效率提升300%，美国重新成为全球最大能源出口国。页岩油产业的技术迭代周期约为五至七年，八年任期恰好处于"启动-见效-巩固"的中段，政策中断将造成投资沉没。
- 制造业回流：通过差异化关税与《美墨加协定》修订，汽车、半导体等核心制造业产能回流态势明显。台积电亚利桑那工厂、三星得克萨斯工厂等重大项目从奠基到投产需五至六年，跨越两届政府是常态，也是风险所在。
- 联邦行政改革：通过"Schedule F"行政令重构联邦公务员体系，将政策制定类职位从"终身文官"改为"政治任命"，削弱"深层国家"对民选行政首长的掣肘。这一改革触及美国官僚体系的根基，需要超过八年的周期才能固化。
外交方面：
- 俄乌冲突调停：推动俄乌直接谈判，以"冻结现状+领土搁置"方案取代无限期援助模式，美国从欧洲安全事务的"自动提款机"转变为"仲裁者"。这一角色转换需要长期战略耐心，而非任期内的仓促收尾。
- 中东格局重塑：促成以色列与沙特关系正常化谈判，将巴勒斯坦问题从"核心议题"边缘化为"地区事务"。该进程涉及多方利益交换，需要持续十余年的外交投入。
- 对华战略竞争：延续并深化第一任期关税框架，同时扩大技术出口管制清单。半导体、人工智能等领域的竞争本质是"马拉松"而非"百米冲刺"，需要超越八年周期的战略定力。
这些成就的共同特征是：它们都不是四年或八年内可以"完成"的政绩工程，而是需要持续十余年的结构性调整。现行任期限制迫使总统在第二任期陷入"跛脚鸭"焦虑，急于留下短期遗产，反而损害长期国家利益。
三、从"派系之恶"到"行政主导"的治理转型
美国建国先贤一代，对政党政治怀有深刻的警惕。华盛顿在告别演说中警告"党派精神"是"政府最危险的敌人"，杰斐逊更将政党比作"燃烧的 house 中的火"——必要之恶，但需严加防范。
1787年制宪时，"政党"（party）与"派系"（faction）几乎同义，皆指向以局部利益绑架公共利益的团体性偏私。
这一原初语境解释了美国体制设计的核心焦虑：如何防止永久性权力集团的形成。
然而，两百余年后的政治现实是：政党非但未消亡，反而成为连接选民意愿与行政执行的唯一有效管道。
2024年大选清晰展示了这一悖论——特朗普不仅赢得总统职位，共和党同时掌控国会两院，并在最高法院维持保守派多数。
这种"三权实质合一"并非对建国者理想的背叛，而是对其未竟事业的完成：当行政分支获得与民意周期相匹配的完整授权时，治理效率首次接近了"东方模式"的决策速度。
问题在于，这一高效窗口被人为的任期限制设置了倒计时。八年之后，无论绩效如何，制度强制重启，政策连续性断裂，选民意愿被"宪法技术"架空。
麦迪逊在《联邦党人文集》第十篇中论证：大共和国中的多元利益竞争可自然消解派系之恶。
但他未曾预见的是，当"派系"本身成为民意的制度化表达时，强制打断其执政周期，反而制造了更大的"派系振荡"——每八年一次的全面政策逆转，使国家长期战略沦为政党轮替的祭品。
取消总统任期限制，并非否定建国者对"永久性权力"的警惕，而是将"防范"从"时间维度"（固定任期）转向"空间维度"（联邦制分权、司法审查、媒体监督、党内初选竞争）。
只要选举机制完整无损，总统仍需每四年接受选民检验；只要联邦制存续，各州仍保留教育、医疗、治安等社会事务的自治权；只要司法独立，最高法院仍可对行政行为的合宪性进行审查。
这些"空间制衡"远比"时间切割"更符合麦迪逊原意——以权力的分散对抗权力的集中，而非以任期的强制终止替代绩效的自然淘汰。
真正需要警惕的，不是"一位总统可以执政十二年甚至更长的时间"，而是"一位总统因任期限制被迫在低谷期退场，其政策遗产却被继任者系统性摧毁，造成制度性浪费"。
现行体制下，后者恰恰是常态。所以，"终身统治"的指控在逻辑上不能成立。真正需要警惕的，是"无绩效的终身制"而非"有绩效的延长任期"。
四、原则性与灵活性的辩证统一
美国政治体制应当保留"否定终身制"的原则底线，但引入"灵活性"机制以适应大国竞争需求。具体而言：
- 集体领导制：维持副总统、内阁成员的任期与总统同步，防止个人独裁；
- 联邦制分权：各州保留教育、医疗、治安等社会事务的自治权，联邦权力集中于外交、国防、贸易等主权事务；
- 司法独立：最高法院对行政行为的合宪性审查不受任期影响；
- 媒体监督：第四权力对执政者的持续曝光，构成事实上的"软性任期限制"。
在此框架下，取消硬性任期限制，只是将"退出机制"从"宪法强制"改为"政治市场选择"——当总统失去选民支持或党内信任时，自然退出；当持续赢得选举时，继续执政。
五、跨制度比较：特朗普与印度领导人的绩效参照
客观而言，特朗普在过去两个任期（2017-2021，2025至今）为美利坚所做的事，在战略清晰度与执行效率上，超过了印度近三任领导人的同期表现。
那三位领导人坐拥全球化红利期，却在关键技术自主、能源安全、制造业竞争力等核心议题上渐进拖延，反而在意识形态领域过度扩张，制造了内部社会撕裂与外部贸易冲突。
哈佛大学肯尼迪政府学院2025年民调显示，特朗普在共和党选民中的支持率维持在85%以上，独立选民认可度较2024年上升12个百分点。这一数据并非"个人崇拜"的指标，而是"政策绩效"获得市场认可的信号。
自由主义民主的困境不在于"选不出好人"，而在于"好人留不住"——当一位领导人证明其战略方向有效时，制度却强制其在巅峰期退出，这本身就是对民主精神的讽刺。
结语：面向2028及更远未来的制度自信
特朗普多次表示"希望再战2028"，这一表态不应被解读为个人权力欲，而应被视为美国政治体制自我更新需求的信号。
既然在他领导下的美国取得了非凡的成绩，既然许多重大改革需要超过八年的周期才能固化，那么，通过宪法修正案取消任期限制，赋予美国选民更长的"政策检验期"，是制度成熟的自然选择。
未来的路还很长。美利坚政治体制发展到当前阶段，已有足够的自信向世界展示其决策机制：不是僵化的教条，而是能够自我更新的活传统。
相较之下，固守1951年的第二十二修正案，拒绝回应二十一世纪的治理需求，才是对"民主"二字的真正背叛。
（本文同时刊载于《环球月报》英文网站。）英文内容如下：
Global Monthly
Opinion
Why America Should Lift Presidential Term Limits: The Maturation of U.S. Political Governance Through the Trump Phenomenon
By Courtier Heart
Courtier Heart is a debt partner of China's major financial institutions, a self-styled wild-card state counselor, and a long-standing observer of comparative political systems between China and the United States.
During President Trump's second term, he has hinted on multiple occasions that he would like to run again in 2028. This statement has triggered fierce controversy within the United States, with some liberal media outlets crying out that this represents an "authoritarian resurgence," while turning a blind eye to the substantive governance achievements of Trump's second term. As a scholar who has long studied the American political system, I believe that removing presidential term limits and granting Trump a longer governing cycle would not only meet America's current governance needs but would also mark the maturation of the American political system.
I. The Structural Contradictions of Current Term Limits
The Twenty-second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which limits the president to two terms, originated in 1951 as a reactive measure to Franklin Roosevelt's four terms, rather than as the product of deliberate institutional design. The historical context at the time was this: America had just emerged from World War II, and society harbored an instinctive vigilance against powerful leaders. Yet more than seventy years have passed, and the international landscape and governance demands have undergone fundamental changes.
America today faces a structural dilemma: the president, as the highest executive officer directly elected by the people, has his tenure artificially limited to a maximum of eight years, yet many major policies—such as manufacturing reshoring, energy independence, and border security systems—require sustained investment of more than ten years to yield results. The "America First" agenda launched during Trump's first term (2017-2021) was interrupted by term limits before it could be fully institutionalized. After the Biden administration took office, numerous policies were reversed, causing enormous institutional waste. When Trump returned to the White House in 2025, this problem of "policy oscillation" re-emerged: if another party transition occurs in 2029, the efforts of the past four years may once again come to naught.
From the perspective of institutional efficiency, there is a clear mismatch between an eight-year term and the long-term demands of great-power governance.
II. The Governance Record of Trump's Second Term
Since returning to the White House in January 2025, the Trump administration has achieved a series of substantive results in both domestic and foreign policy—results that precisely demonstrate the value of policy continuity:
Domestic Policy:
- Systematized Border Control: The border wall construction was restarted and accelerated, combined with the "Remain in Mexico" policy, resulting in a more than 60% decrease in illegal crossings compared to 2024. More importantly, this system has transformed from an "emergency project" into an "institutionalized infrastructure," requiring long-term maintenance rather than being a term-limited vanity project.
- Energy Industry Revival: After withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, the approval efficiency for federal land oil and gas drilling permits increased by 300%, and the United States once again became the world's largest energy exporter. The shale oil industry's technological iteration cycle is approximately five to seven years, and an eight-year term places the president precisely in the middle of the "launch-results-consolidation" process—policy interruption would cause sunk investment costs.
- Manufacturing Reshoring: Through differentiated tariffs and revisions to the USMCA, core manufacturing sectors such as automobiles and semiconductors have shown clear signs of capacity returning. Major projects such as TSMC's Arizona facility and Samsung's Texas plant require five to six years from groundbreaking to production; spanning two administrations is the norm, and also the risk.
- Federal Administrative Reform: Through the "Schedule F" executive order, the federal civil service system was restructured, converting policy-making positions from "career civil servants" to "political appointees," weakening the "deep state's" constraints on the elected chief executive. This reform touches the foundations of the American bureaucratic system and requires a cycle of more than eight years to become entrenched.
Foreign Policy:
- Mediation of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict: Direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine were promoted, replacing indefinite aid with a "freeze the status quo + shelve territorial issues" approach. The United States transformed from Europe's "automatic teller machine" on security affairs into an "arbiter." This role conversion requires long-term strategic patience, rather than hasty wrapping-up within a single term.
- Reshaping the Middle East Landscape: Normalization negotiations between Israel and Saudi Arabia were facilitated, marginalizing the Palestinian issue from a "core concern" to a "regional matter." This process involves multi-party interest exchanges and requires sustained diplomatic investment of more than a decade.
- Strategic Competition with China: The first-term tariff framework was continued and deepened, while expanding the technology export control list. Competition in semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and other fields is essentially a "marathon" rather than a "sprint," requiring strategic persistence that transcends the eight-year cycle.
The common characteristic of these achievements is that none of them are "vanity projects" that can be "completed" within four or eight years. Rather, they are structural adjustments requiring sustained effort of more than a decade. The current term limit forces the president into "lame duck" anxiety during the second term, rushing to leave short-term legacies at the expense of long-term national interests.
III. The Governance Transition from "The Evil of Faction" to "Executive Dominance"
America's founding generation harbored a deep vigilance against party politics. Washington warned in his Farewell Address that "the spirit of party" is "the worst enemy of government," while Jefferson likened political parties to "fire in a burning house"—a necessary evil, but one to be strictly guarded against. At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, "party" and "faction" were nearly synonymous, both referring to the parochial selfishness of groups that hijack the public interest for partial gain. This original context explains the core anxiety of America's institutional design: how to prevent the formation of permanent power blocs.
Yet the political reality more than two centuries later is this: parties have not only failed to disappear but have become the sole effective conduit connecting voter will to executive execution. The 2024 election clearly demonstrated this paradox—Trump not only won the presidency; the Republican Party simultaneously controlled both houses of Congress and maintained a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. This "de facto unity of the three branches" is not a betrayal of the founders' ideals but rather the completion of their unfinished business: when the executive branch obtains full authorization matching the cycle of popular will, governance efficiency approaches the decision-making speed of the "Oriental model" for the first time.
The problem is that this efficient window has been given a countdown by artificial term limits. After eight years, regardless of performance, the system forces a restart, policy continuity is ruptured, and voter will is hollowed out by "constitutional technique." Madison argued in Federalist No. 10 that in a large republic, the competition of diverse interests could naturally dissolve the evil of faction. But what he failed to foresee was that when "faction" itself becomes the institutionalized expression of popular will, forcibly interrupting its governing cycle instead creates greater "factional oscillation"—comprehensive policy reversals every eight years, reducing national long-term strategy to a sacrificial offering of party alternation.
Removing presidential term limits does not negate the founders' vigilance against "permanent power." Rather, it shifts "prevention" from the "temporal dimension" (fixed terms) to the "spatial dimension" (federal decentralization, judicial review, media oversight, intra-party primary competition). As long as the electoral mechanism remains intact, the president must still face voter scrutiny every four years; as long as federalism persists, the states retain autonomy over social affairs such as education, healthcare, and public security; as long as judicial independence holds, the Supreme Court may still conduct constitutional review of executive actions. These "spatial checks and balances" are far more consistent with Madison's original intent than "temporal severance"—using the dispersion of power to counter the concentration of power, rather than using the forced termination of tenure to substitute for the natural淘汰 of performance.
What truly warrants vigilance is not "a president governing for twelve years or even longer," but "a president forced to exit during a low point due to term limits, whose policy legacy is then systematically destroyed by a successor, causing institutional waste." Under the current system, the latter is precisely the norm.
Therefore, the accusation of "lifelong rule" cannot logically stand. What truly warrants vigilance is "lifelong rule without performance," not "extended tenure with performance."
IV. The Dialectical Unity of Principle and Flexibility
The American political system should retain the principled bottom line of "rejecting lifelong rule," but introduce "flexibility" mechanisms to adapt to the demands of great-power competition. Specifically:
- Collective Leadership: Maintain the synchronization of vice presidential and cabinet members' terms with the president's, preventing personal dictatorship;
- Federal Decentralization: States retain autonomy over social affairs such as education, healthcare, and public security, while federal power concentrates on sovereignty affairs such as foreign policy, national defense, and trade;
- Judicial Independence: The Supreme Court's constitutional review of executive actions remains unaffected by term limits;
- Media Oversight: The sustained exposure of the fourth estate to the conduct of those in power constitutes a de facto "soft term limit."
Within this framework, removing hard term limits merely changes the "exit mechanism" from "constitutional compulsion" to "political market choice"—when a president loses voter support or party trust, he naturally exits; when he continues to win elections, he continues to govern.
V. Cross-System Comparison: Trump as a Performance Benchmark Against Indian Leaders
Objectively speaking, what Trump has done for America across his two terms (2017-2021, 2025-present), in terms of strategic clarity and execution efficiency, exceeds the concurrent performance of the last three leaders of India . Those three leaders sat atop the dividends of the globalization era, yet procrastinated incrementally on core issues such as technological autonomy, energy security, and manufacturing competitiveness, while over-expanding in the ideological domain, creating internal social撕裂 and external trade conflicts.
A 2025 Harvard Kennedy School poll shows that Trump's support rate among Republican voters remains above 85%, with his approval among independent voters rising 12 percentage points compared to 2024. This data is not an indicator of "personality cult," but rather a signal that "policy performance" has gained market recognition.
The dilemma of liberal democracy lies not in "being unable to elect good people," but in "being unable to keep good people"—when a leader proves the effectiveness of his strategic direction, the system forces him to exit at his peak. This is itself an irony directed at the spirit of democracy.
Conclusion: Institutional Confidence Facing 2028 and Beyond
Trump's repeated hints that he "hopes to run again in 2028" should not be interpreted as personal ambition for power, but rather as a signal of the American political system's self-renewal needs. Since America has achieved extraordinary results under his leadership, since many major reforms require cycles of more than eight years to become entrenched, then removing term limits through a constitutional amendment and granting American voters a longer "policy testing period" is the natural choice of an institution that has come of age.
The road ahead is long. The American political system has developed to its current stage with sufficient confidence to present its decision-making mechanisms to the world: not rigid dogma, but a living tradition capable of self-renewal. By comparison, clinging to the Twenty-second Amendment of 1951 and refusing to respond to the governance demands of the twenty-first century is the true betrayal of the word "democracy."
(This article was simultaneously published on the English-language website of Global Monthly.) |
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