Hawaii was naturally shaken by the untimely death of  popular Kauai Mayor Bryan Baptiste this week.

We expect our elected leaders to stay around forever, and generally they do. Were it not for term limits, office-holders in Hawaii likely could hold on to their post for life, or at least until they decide to volunarily give it up. That’s certainly true in Congress, where no full-term incumbent has ever been turned out of office through election. In fact, the only transitions in Congress were when a member left voluntarily (Oren Long, Patsy Mink, Cec Heftel) for retirement or to seek another office) or through death, which was the case when Sen. Spark Matsunaga and Rep. Patsy Mink died in office.

We sometimes look down on other countries with their “presidents-for-life” and dynastic politics. But in our own way, we have the same system here. Is it just human nature to want to hold on to what we know, including elected politicians?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 11:28 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.