By that line of reasoning wouldn't presidents continue to perceive their final term -- in that case, also their first -- as the unaccountable one? I'm afraid the problems are much more deeply seated within political culture and won't be fixed by such simple (if still completely unattainable) measures.

Things that come to mind are the absolute restriction to a two party system and the concentration on a leader figure, ie. the identification of the government with one person. But from my limited point of view both of those things are at the core of the US political identity, utterly entrenched.

If a president could only serve one six year term then wouldn't you get the unaccountable second term crap for the whole of that six year term? Surely one thing that keeps a politician accountable to the electorate is the prospect of having to fight an election at some point in the future.

It's too bad you guys don't have a hair-trigger for Motions of No Confidence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_of_no_confidence) like we do in Canada. We have elections every five years at the most--but it rarely ever gets to be that long, because some issue or another inevitably comes along that causes the rest of the House to be upset with the party in power, and it's very easy to throw down the "well, if you think you have the citizens' consent, just get them to vote you in again" gauntlet.

> This way we don't get the unaccountable second term crap we see a lot of.

Usually the president is working so that his successor will be from his chosen party. Who thinks the next president will be a Democrat? (It doesn't really matter if you think Republican is better or worse - if they are not happy people will switch.)

The problem is our two party system is merely a distraction to keep us fighting with each other while massive changes are being made behind the scenes. Take any issue of importance (foreign policy, national debt, warrentless wire-taping, torture, personal liberty, free speech, etc) and you'll see both parties voting together to undermine our freedom and give themselves more power/money.

The people need a third party to switch to. The current two-party system leads to a serious lack of democracy.

Or they would actually be able to do something in the first term instead of worrying about/working toward re-election.

That's a hard problem to solve, how can you be sure that the first and the only term will not be abused?

"Why should he care?"

Because the is the President of the United States of America.