Re: Townhall.com – 11/30/2008 – “In open contests, voters beat politicians” – Paul Jacob

Jacob doesn’t understand the American voter. Although voters say they are for term limits in principal, voters’ actions say that voters really mean that they are for term limits for those legislators who represent voters other then themselves --- legislators who represent their constituencies interest well are overwhelmingly reelected again and again in spite of what the same voters may say about term limits in general.

Arguments for term limits seem equivalent to the following: voters are incompetent to tell when the performance of their elected legislators fail to warrant their reelection and thus keep reelecting incumbent legislators who in someone’s opinion (other than the legislators’ constituency) should not be reelected; and to insure these incumbent legislators get kicked out of office (regardless of what their constituency thinks), voters should not be allowed to reelect them. Power does corrupt, and I guess Jacob feels that the power to reelect legislators gives the voters too much power, and suggests that voters be relieved of that power.

What are the arguments against term limits? Below are three.

Argument #1: Term limits is too blunt a sword; it removes not only those incumbents whose performance is deficient but also the ones whose performance is superior. It’s like reducing pork by cutting the budget across the board --- 10% of the pork goes as well as 10% of the defense budget and 10% of the repayment on our national debt. 10% less pork hardly makes a difference. 10% of our military budget might permanently cripple our national security. 10% less on repaying our national debt means the country is technically in default.

Argument #2: If voters are too incompetent to determine when those who represent them should not continue in that role, how can voters be competent enough to determine who should represent them at all; after all, evaluating incumbent legislators on their performance is much easier than predicting legislators performance prior to their being legislators.

Argument #3: Long time incumbents carry with them knowledge and skills that takes years to acquire, and having a legislative body of perpetual rookies means no such knowledge and skill base will reside in the legislators but instead would lie in the professional staffers. I’d rather have enough experienced legislators around to act as a counter weight to unelected professional staffers. Reforming the seniority system seems to me to be a more sensible plan than firing all the senior legislators.

Corruption is not the only reason to explain how so many legislators who are elected to office with the promise of establishing term limits change their views once in office. Perhaps after getting some on the job experience, they realize that term limits is a terrible idea that is attractive only to those who don’t understand what it takes to be a good legislator.