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3 out of 4 stars
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While I try to avoid politics like the plague, I've heard plenty of information about why term limits are important. This made me incredibly interested in a term limit revolution! For those not familiar with term limits, they're exactly what they sound like: limits on the number of terms a person can be elected to a specific position in government. For example, the President of the United States is limited to two terms as president. After a particular president has served two terms, they can't run for president ever again, even if they were the greatest president of all time. However, people who run for the House of Representatives or Senate can be elected over and over without any limit whatsoever. This limitless, potentially life-long electability is the focus of The Term Limit Revolution by Scott Murphy.
I was surprised by how inviting The Term Limit Revolution was. It's easy to read and doesn't rely on the reader having any knowledge about how the United States government works. While The Term Limit Revolution is technically a political book, it's entirely bipartisan.
The focus of this book is singular: term limits. Scott takes readers through the importance of creating an amendment that would enforce term limits, then gives specifics about how readers can help make the amendment happen. He shows readers how a lack of term limits encourages politicians to focus all of their time on being reelected, and how this leads to corruption, scandals, and an eternity of never accomplishing anything. In fact, Scott shows readers how accomplishing important things would negatively affect a politician!
Scott includes some terrific specifics in his book, but he also includes lots of comparisons. The huge battles between Democrats and Republicans alone are compared to professional wrestling, Orson Welles's 1982, and Siegfried and Roy (the magicians). This is done in a way that's equally illuminating and entertaining, and these comparisons give the author's points added weight.
My favorite part of the book is that Scott includes lots of realistic specifics about how to make the term limits amendment a reality. I also appreciated that Scott was able to get me enthusiastic about his term limit revolution. However, while the book is nearly 200 pages long, some thorough editing could have cut out at least 20-40% of that content. Scott often makes the same point multiple times in a row, and then again in the next chapter, then once more a couple of chapters later. By the end of the book, my passion for the revolution was nearly gone.
There are also numerous grammatical errors. While I found less than one per ten pages, there were still more than 10 errors in the book. I was also disappointed that the author's website doesn't work. I visited to sign the petition and got an error the entire day I tried to visit. Discussion about the website gets a fair amount of space in the book, and it sounded like a terrific way for readers to maximize their effort toward making the term limits amendment happen. The other website listed in the book was functional though.
While I'd give The Term Limit Revolution 2.5 stars if I could, I'm satisfied giving it 3 out of 4 stars. Scott does a great job with the information he provided, both with its quality and the way he presents it. Readers should just keep in mind that the book is quite repetitive, even compared to books that repeat the main points once or twice to ensure readers remember them.
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The Term Limit Revolution
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