The Tenacious Allure of Term Limits
Nelson Lee Walker is a retired engineer who has developed a passion for Congressional term limits, and he’s certainly not alone. His advocacy site lists more than a dozen other sites/organizations fighting the same fight.
What’s more, despite the failure of the idea to gain traction, it has a healthy populist appeal for many voters. After all, if we can term limit the President, why not members of Congress?
As with every good idea, this one has its fair share of detractors who constructively argue that term limits limit experience – and in Washington, experience counts. Besides, unlike Congress, the President is a power of one, and any power of one rightly deserves greater limits on his or her power than does one Senator among dozens, or one Representative among hundreds.
Those who have, as I have, spent time working the halls of Congress will appreciate both sides of this debate. We have encountered members of Congress whose tenure has lasted well past their useful range. We have also experienced the frustration of working with rookie Members whose passion is admirable but whose inability to understand the complexity of an issue or affect change within the rules of the institutions is frustrating – killing many good causes on the vine of naiveté.
Perhaps there’s a balance: term limits that provide enough time for experience to grow and affect change but not so much time that corruption and senility can set in. And that’s one of the major rubs on this idea: How do you quantify a limit that’s enough? Should it be eight years like the President? That might work for the House, but not the Senate, else they’d serve a term and a third, and changing that dynamic (from a six-year term to four or two) might prove even more elusive. So maybe it’s eight years in the House, 12 years in the Senate? Then again, if we follow the rule that the greater the concentration of power, the shorter the grace period should be, the Senate with its even one hundred Members should probably be limited to less time than the House with its several hundred Members.
And the slicing and dicing of the debate goes on from there.
The other major rub on term limits is the simultaneous resignation and sense of empowerment that sets in after voters accomplish what they did in the 2006 mid-terms, where they proved once again that, motivated by enough disgust, they can in fact boot out many long-timers, as former Senator Conrad Burns (among others) learned the hard way.
Still, despite all the tussle and roe over the details, there’s a part of me that is rooting for Nelson Lee Walker and his like-minded counterparts – a part of me that is still perhaps idealistic enough to find the concept of citizen policymakers (versus career politicians) a dream worth pursuing, even if it takes years if not decades to implement.
If you share Nelson Lee Walker’s passion for this fight, please pay him a visit, and check out the other term limit sites to which he links.
(Cross-posted at Central Sanity.)
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17 Responses to “The Tenacious Allure of Term Limits”
Term limits sorta worked in 2006, maybe a less lazy and more informes voting population bill should be enacted with term limits. If 36 million watch and vote for that silly Fox show while Iraq continues, the US public deserves it’s government.
Just a personal opinion, but I believe that three terms should be the limit for all elected offices, regardless of the length of term.
Yep. Six years for Congress, 18 years for Senate, and 12 years for President.
Too bad it will never happen.
I like the concept, but doubt most presidencies would survive three terms. By the time most reach halfway through the second one, they seem to become hampered by scandal, oversecrecy and a national malaise. Might work in the House and Senate, though.
Let me add one more dimension here — keep in mind that when you have inexperienced legislators, the expertise and power are going to accumulate in the hordes of staffers on Capitol Hill.
–|PW|–
That’s true, and even more ex-congressmen and staffers going through the revolving door to work for influential lobbying firms, thereby trading on their expertise. I actually see this trend as worse for the country than, having representatives in Congress past their prime; it really gives special interests an unfair advantage, in their quest to influence legislation. I’d like to see those ties weakened a bit.
Sorry, but I don’t buy the experience argument (the most commonly used one by the LSOS in office)… that is what experienced Congressional staff is for. The more of our elected representatives that have to go back to a normal life, a job, etc. the better off we’d all be. It should be clear to everyone that politics as a career is corrupting. It reminds me of Gladiator when Caesar asked Maximus if he would rule Rome. Maximus answered “with all of my heart, no”. Caesar said that is why it must be you Maximus. A lot of wisdom in that exchange.
Maybe more of them wouldn’t mind going back to a normal life, if there were fewer perks. That is the biggest adjustment, once they leave office, and is also why they become so out-of-touch with ordinary Americans. You don’t see that as much with newer members like Jim Webb or Jon Tester.
It’s well known that incumbents have an advantage over challengers in elections. I think this creates complacency among the career politicians. I also believe, or would like to believe, that many enter politics with passion and noble intentions. The complacency that develops displaces the passion. Term limits might not be a bad idea in order to keep fresh, passionate blood moving through Congress. Ideally a politician is removed right before he or she loses their stride, which means experience is a factor. But what are those limits that pull a politician at that ideal moment?
I didn’t notice any of the Class of 1994 Republicans who signed on to the Contract with America not running for re-election last year. We had a couple of them here in NJ. Anyone know of any who didn’t run for re-election last year? I’m just curious, since we’re on the topic of term limits. For those who can’t recall, the Contract with America included a provision that the signers would voluntarily limit themselves to 12 years in the House.
As I see it, there should be no term limits at all. One just has to make sure that elections are held / organized fairly and democratically. It is the people’s responsbility to NOT vote for someone if they believe that that someone is in office for too long.
term limits mean nothing if gerrymandering remains in effect.
take a look at california to see the effect of term limits without the removal of gerrymandering.
the legislature is a joke, and all that changes is that the career pols run for a different office.
i am against term limits…let the voter decide
and end immoral gerrymandering.
Uncle Joe, Just a thought but it seems to me that with term limits it would be more difficult to develop the entrenched power structures that facilitate “immoral gerrymandering.”
This is actually a tough issue with reasonable arguments on both sides, but I cannot see where NOT having term limits has served us particularly well. The powers associated with incumbency to control allocations, jobs, government contracts, etc. is so enormous that I feel winning elections and the seductions of self-aggrandizement become ends in themselves and service to the republic is secondary. The recent Cunningham and Ney cases are not unique but underscore my point.
I’d like to see presidents limited to one six-year term, both to avoid mischief and keep them focused on their job and not the next election. Similarly, three five-year terms in the Senate and four three-year terms in the House sound reasonable. House members in particular have no sooner won an election than they are thinking about the next one. By mixing up the term numbers (6, 5, 3 years) you lessen the risk of one party controlling all branches for long periods of time because the elections will not always fall together.
Conrad Burns, though still under a cloud of investigation, is now working as a lobbyist with former Senator Rick Santorium (sp?). Not too shabby for a back-up job.
No term limits should be set. Experienced staff? You mean like all of those people who as soon as they have that experience move on to work for lobbyists or others who have business with the government? Experience is necessary when dealing with anything as complex as a nation as the U.S.
Citizen legislators? Please. This is not the Nineteenth century, people. How many average Americans could really leave their career for whatever term they were in office and come home and pick right back up? Not me. No one I know, either. Ideals are good, but there are some that just run smack into a hard wall of reality.
Jim S,
I have to agree with you, although I would like to see ways to address the advantage that incumbents have. Gerrymandering shouldn’t be allowed, and instead redistricting could be automatically be triggered by population growth, with lines drawn by computer modeling and approved by a bipartisan panel with equal numbers of members from each party.
I’m all for experience, as long as the voters in the district actually want to send the Congresscritter back, instead of the ones who don’t want to do so being outvoted by the new constituents of their conveniently redrawn district.
I think it’s time to call the ambulance since I’m in shock that CS and I agree on something. Here’s another one. There should be more members of the House. That way there would be fewer people in a district and hopefully it would be one step to help weaken gerrymandering.