Hugo Chavez is the latest public official to join the effort to roll back term limits. He will soon be free of the limits on his terms as president of Venezuela as well as other constraints on his drive toward total power. If you ever wondered whether term limits contravened excessive ambition, perhaps President Chavez suggests an answer.

Chavez is seeking to end his term limit and other measures to increase his power “to guarantee to the people the largest amount of happiness possible.”

Is he so different from American politicians? He offers the voters happiness (not liberty) and demands power adequate to that end. Constraints on power like term limits are so, you know, neo-liberal, so pre-New Deal.