Thoughts on Term Limits

In recent weeks there seems to have been a rise in the calls for consideration of term limits for our public servants elected to serve in Washington. These calls invariably come from the people who don’t like the way things are going. However, when things are going their way, we seldom hear from them. I happen to live in a state, Missouri, which over 20 years ago decided to implement this idea for our state legislators. I believe it was in 1992 that the people voted to make this change, so we have been living with it for some time. Although I am a Missouri transplant, I have lived here since well before the change and the entire time since.

So how has it worked? From my perspective, it has been a disaster. In fact, folks here are starting to talk about how to “tweak” the law so some of its negative effects will be mitigated. In our case, as some readers know, we allow individuals to serve a total of eight years in the House and another eight years in the Senate. The result has produced a series of what I will call legislative greenhorns. I am not a legislator, but as I look at what they are supposed to be doing, it looks to be a position, when approached with knowledge, wisdom and good judgement, that has a steep learning curve. One that may take a couple of years to get a handle on. So, just as a legislator hits her stride, our law says, “Sorry, you’ve got to move on.”  What if the individual is doing a good job? The voters of our state don’t get to make that decision. After eight years, it’s time to move on to someone else.

Obviously, one result of term limits is that we are not allowing ourselves to benefit from the experience these seasoned lawmakers can bring to their positions.  Another problem is that since there is so much opportunity for mandatory change, people with little experience or knowledge of statesmanship line up to take their shot. It seems, at least to me, that in order to get noticed, they have to be more outrageous than their opponent and, of course, that first occurs within the party. This can have the deleterious effect of pushing the parties further to the extremes and further apart from each other. The art of compromise is then not only lost but becomes a four letter word.  Additionally, we have seen that those who wish to continue in the public sphere have found ways to get job offers near the end of their terms and we have experienced a number of individuals who, knowing they could not run again, have resigned before the end of their final term to accept another offer, thus leaving their respective party and constituency with a vacuum of leadership.

The reality is that in a democracy we have built in term limits. It is simply called the “vote”. If citizens exercise their right and responsibility to vote and to vote intelligently, they don’t need additional voting measures to protect their democracy.

But what about “rigged” elections and voter fraud?  The facts are quite clear. These are basically nonexistent in our system. Calls for closer monitoring of elections through photo IDs are quite simply fear mongering. This is a solution for a problem which is statistically insignificant in our voting culture; and, recent federal court rulings have taken steps to keep voter restriction laws in some states from adversely affecting the vote. As far as rigged elections, Bernie Sanders was making reference to the Democratic Party’s use of super delegates and to some states’ laws which mandate party declaration in primary elections. While these may be issues that need to be addressed, they do not rise to the level of the charges of rigged national elections candidate Trump is alluding to in some of his statements.

I do think that we have to keep an eye out for candidate and election manipulation, but my concern is more over the effects of big dollar and nameless donors as well as the impact of well funded lobbyists and PACs. These cannot be regulated by term limits, but they can and do exist even while we impose term limits on qualified individuals who want to serve.