More Perfect Democracy IIFollow

...Electric Term Limits

Would term limits on Congressional positions help or hinder the democratic process? If you were limited to a single six year term as senator and perhaps two or three terms as a House representative, would it free people up to vote in their legitimate best interest for the nation rather than concern with how it would affect their polling? This is the same reason why we appoint Supreme Court Justices for life but obviously we're not looking to elect Congressional representatives for life terms.

I've heard people on both sides of the partisan aisle before bemoan the fact that we have "career politicians", especially in Congress who's primary motivation (for purposes of the argument, I don't know if I fully believe it) is to get re-elected and keep their job. The purpose of the short House representative term was to promote a continual churning of new people in that chamber. Instead, out of 436 seats, we see perhaps 50-60 of them honestly contested each election cycle.

Obvious downsides would be that you'd lose policy experience in Congress, each member would be spending the first part of their term on a learning curve and sometimes the guy who is in there is legitimately the best guy running for the job.

I know that this won't ever happen. Hell, it seems that half the time when someone running "term limits" himself in his campaign pledges, he breaks it anyway. And the people who'd need to enact the changes are the same people who are the so-called career politicians. But what the hell; let's discuss it.

I hate them.

I put a lot of faith into the average American.

If someone starts to suck at their job or starts to **** off the public, then he or she will get voted out of office. To have restrictions upon how long someone can serve would be to strip that power away from the people and tell them "no, you cannot have the same guy you've had, even if you love how he did his job and want to have angry sex all the time".

Maine has had term limits since the early 90's. After 4 two-year terms as a Senator or Congressperson they're out. There are mechanisms to stay in the game. Many politicians will switch chambers at the end of their term or re-run for office after a two-year waiting period has ended.

I wasn't in Maine much prior to term limits so can't make a before and after comparison. I talked once to one of our long serving senators specifically about term limits. He was dead set against them and is still working today to have them removed.

Personally though, I haven't seen any of the negatives happen. There hasn't seemed to be a slowing down of rule-making due to inexperienced politicians, nor have the past mistakes been repeated.

I'm not sure how I'd feel about federal term limits. The negatives only seem to compound themselves based on the sheer volume of people and rules. At the same time, it would be nice to think that our politicians were legislating with our best interests in mind, rather than their job stability. Still, the two don't have to conflict with each other.

I'm not convinced term limits for congress/senate are all that useful. I'm not too keen on "career politicians", and this is a trend we suffer from in Europe too. But there is no easy-fix to this. Limiting terms is certainly not one of them.

If we are going to improve "democracy", then I do think there's a lot to be said for reforming election campaign finances. This should probably be one of the starting places. Fund-raising skills should not be a deciding factor in getting elected, nor should it occupy so much time for politicians and their machinery. I'm pretty much all for exclusive public financing of political campaigns, and to outlaw outside contributions, or advertising. It's compicated in practice to set the exact parameters for this, but the tighter and more transparent the rules, the better.

Then there's all teh lobbying. Surely, surely, this must be reformed/properly regulated one day.

A lot of the things Obama said during his campaigns on transparency in government made a lot of sense, and I do wish he'd implement them.

I'm all for term limits. It's a lot harder for the big companies to continually "buy out" new recruits than it is to maintain a long standing "friend". I think the unlimited terms is a huge problem where lobbying and corporate manipulation is concerned.

Oh, if it were televised, sure. No one would care that we chronically fail to pass a budget on time.

I'm of a mind to have term limits for sure.

Course, I also believe that you can't become a Mayor without being an Alderman, much in the same way you shouldn't be a manager at a gas station without being a clerk.

This way everyone get's the proper experience and you either keep getting promoted or you lose your job.

The best term limit is a fair and open election process, but since we cant seem to handle that much anymore set term limits maybe a good idea.
On the other hand having the corporations that pay for things having to invest new sums of money on new representatives every few year may hurt their profit margin, so it may not happen any time soon.
After all I remember a few Republicans pledging only to run for (?4?) terms in the house back when Newt was the speaker only to renege because they became more powerful as seniority grew.


Maybe if we rotated the important committee assignments randomly it would make more sense to have a term limit.

My modest proposal is 3 terms in the Senate and 7 terms in the House.

IMO, the biggest drawback to term limits is that in a representative democracy, the only thing really forcing a politician to reflect the views and positions of the people who voted for him is the effect his actions have on his chance of re-election. We elect people in advance, hoping they'll do things we agree with once they are in power.

Voters don't care what elected officials do once they're in power. This should have become obvious to you around age 13 at the very latest.

Term limits do absolutely nothing meaningful.