I read what must be the most succinct summary of the term limit debate over at Utah Policy. LaVarr Webb said:
I am a big fan of congressional term limits if they are applied across the board. It would be foolish, however, for Utah to unilaterally impose term limits.
As long as power in Congress is amassed in its most senior members, Utah needs to play that game or be badly disadvantaged.
But term limits for all makes sense.
I don’t agree in a legislated term limit. There are people you will want to keep in office for longer than a certain term.
I would respond to trgrant by asking a question inspired by someone who had previously opposed term limits. How many hundreds of incumbent get reelected after “a certain term” despite widespread dissatisfaction with their service – now compare that to the number of people who you would really want to keep in after that time. I would bet the benefits of term limits in terms of removing entrenched and undesirable incumbents would outweigh the loss of established and desirable incumbents by at least 100 to 1. Besides that, of those who you wish to keep in, how much of the reason for keeping them is based mainly on seniority rather than irreplaceability?
To LaVarr Webb I would ask – if Congressional term limits are good, why not set the example by imposing term limits at the state legislature so that voters can begin to see the benefit locally and have more inclination to implement it federally.
Term limits are a bad solution to the wrong problem. First of all, voters have the ability to limit the term of any official every election at the ballot box. Imposing arbitrary term limits robs voters of the choice to retain a good politician (should one appear). Second, term limited politicians are likely to have short-term outlooks that preclude work toward long-term goals that often require short-term sacrifices.
Third, the problem here is requirement for money to campaign effectively. We would not be so apt to re-elect bozos if their campaigns were funded at the same rate as their challengers. If an incumbent, who already has name recognition, can outspend challengers by 5-10 times, or can campaign solely on sound bites and attack ads rather than the issues, then they are likely to win time after time.
Lastly, there is no reason why legislatures have to assign leadership posts based on seniority. Political parties do that because it suits their internal needs, not because the more senior legislators are better in any way.
You are expressing some of the same thoughts I had when I first thought about term limits. Yes voters have the ability to limit any term they want each election but they return over 90% of incumbents during a time when Congress has approval ratings that do not even reach the teens – something doesn’t add up. As for limiting good politicians – as I said in the post – the cost benefit ratio must be at least 100 to 1 in favor of term limiting officeholders despite the theoretical loss of a good politician. you claim that term limits would promote short term outlooks, but stop and think for a second – they already have as short-term an outlook as they possibly could. They can talk about long term but they only think in terms of two year cycles.
I agree that campaigns are too expensive as a major part of this problem, but even if the campaigns were equally funded the incumbent has a huge name recognition advantage in virtually all cases, and as current officeholders they easily garner extra attention as the media covers their current decisions and not just their campaign efforts. Evening out the money is not enough (in fact we have a new Congressman in Utah who beat an incumbent despite being outspent 6 to 1).
Finally, I agree that legislatures do not need to assign leadership posts based on seniority, but it will always suit their needs so long as there is seniority to be had – term limits would minimize the power of seniority.
Two thoughts I failed to add before Charles,
First, the question that convinced me to lose my last reservations about term limits – has there ever been or will there ever be a politician so good that they are indispensable or irreplaceable? Second, what is the difference between the President and the members of Congress? I see no difference that would explain why we would have some ill effect from term limited members of Congress when we have shown for more than half a century that we have not lost anything due to the fact that none of our presidents can serve more than 8 years.
Give Howard Stephenson and company a call up at the state legislature. When pressed by the general public with a initiative effort that would have imposed term limits, they went ahead and passed a more liberal version of it themselves. And then when the time had almost come to give a boot to some longstanding legislators they quietly rescinded that very same law. Never mind that opinion polls showed 75% of Utahns opposed the change.
Lavarr is a great pontificator about how bad Congress is (which is hard to disagree with), but his constant praise of state government is ridiculous. And Sen. Stephenson, captain of the repeal the 17th Amendment movement, doesn’t like to mention that he wouldn’t still be a state senator if they hadn’t rescinded that law.
Why not start with those great “laboratories of democracy” Lavarr?
The first time I wrote about term limits it generated a good discussion here that featured the insights of now-senator Steve Urquhart who was in the legislature in time to repeal the term limit laws. I wonder if we could get enough popular support to get term limits reinstated.
I think that starting with our laboratories of democracy would be a great move – in fact I find it interesting that not one state that enacted term limit laws at the state level and actually allowed them to start term-limiting people out of office has repealed their laws.
David,
I can’t say I disagree with your response. Like so many of our political problems, there simply isn’t any solution that is both likely to succeed and politically possible. Term limits are not the goal, they are intended to help achieve the goal – better and more responsive government. Taken alone, they aren’t likely to achieve that goal. Of course, neither is anything else. Happy New Year, America!