What do the US presidential election, the summer Olympics, and leap year all have in common? They always occur in the same frequency and in the same year. (Except for leap year, which leaps itself on very rare, but predetermined instances.) Plus they're all scheduled to occur again this year. Before the world ends in December, of course.
So what might be the significance of scheduling seemingly important and generally intriguing events on the same periodic basis? Well, the easiest to pick apart is leap year, which is designed to take up the slack (or make room for it, depending on how you look at it) of approximately 1/4 (0.25) of a day that it takes for the earth to orbit the sun every year. I don't have the exact breakdown handy, but it takes the earth about 365.24... days to orbit the sun every year. After every 4 years, then, unless an extra is added to the calendar, Groundhog's Day would eventually align with the Winter Solstice, which would certainly reinforce the cosmic significance of the day.
What about the summer Olympics? Well, one could speculate that 4 years is an appropriate window of age to permit female gymnasts one lifelong chance at glory, or by contrast one chance at bitter defeat. This could also correspond with the average time required for the International Olympic Committee to pass judgment on which US City can most-deservedly host of the games in 20 years, or if a sympathetic nod should go to any remaining stable country in Asia. More than anything, I bet it is just a pain in the ass to throw a global Olympic competition every year (the quintessential benchmark for periodicity). Nobody would care about the games if they occurred every year, and the allure of celebrating them would diminish. Administratively, the cost would skyrocket and the significance would evaporate. And without public interest or support, what's the benefit? Which leads me to the US presidential election.
What if we had the chance to elect a new president every day? Would you vote? Or even once a month? Who actually has the time to understand the previous commander-in-chief's actions or to entertain a hopeful replacement's in that amount of time? Citizens choose not to vote right now, every 4 years, although that also represents apathy towards the system regardless of election frequency.
The term limit of 4 years, and corresponding re-election cycle, could possibly be arbitrary, but more than likely there is a traceable, rational origin from the Colonial days. And whether or not that origin was also arbitrary is besides the point, since the system that was established has served the country for 2.5 centuries and has not warranted any re-adjustment (not in this particular regard). A nation, like an individual, cannot waste time continually re-evaluating a past decision. Or likewise celebrating or agonizing over a poor one. Nope, those decisions, celebrations, and sob-fests should be capped at some frequency, and since we are naturally creatures of astrology, it only makes sense that our periodic game-changers should occur every 4 years.
It would just be a little more apparent if we scheduled them all for February 29th. (And yes, it is summer then, south of the equator.)
