Would you support term limits for congressmen? Why or why not?
Term Limits: Worst... idea... ever.
Pros:
1) Weeds out career politicians. In theory. This is the primary argument for them. Get career politicians out of government and stop them from enriching themselves at our expense.
I think that’s it. <shrug>
Cons:
A) Unknown replacements. Possibly… no, probably… hand-picked by the party, which would be just as bad, if not worse. The average voter is not likely to know who has been chosen for them.
B) Why do we think honest people would magically pop up and replace the dishonest career politicians? Going back to ‘A’ above, we are not guaranteed of any such thing. “Mr Smith Goes to Washington” it wouldn’t be.
C) People are selfish… and too often ignorant and easily-led. People like their own representative because they “bring home the bacon”. People vote their own self-interest and at the expense of everybody else. If people continually re-elect representatives they claim to not like now, they’re still going to vote for whoever promises them the biggest benefit, term limits or not.
D) Due to limited time in service, they’d be even more susceptible to influence and lobbying. We already dislike that career politicians feather their nests over decades. With term limits we’d have unknown people still being wooed by lobbyists and special interests. Human nature being what it is, and with a limited time in which to do any said feather nesting, they’d develop a “Get what I can while I can!” attitude. Short of illegality, they’d be even more outright dishonest. What’s going to happen to them if you the voter disapproves? They’re out in couple years anyway.
E) If California state government is any indicator, it’ll degenerate into “musical political chairs”… people would still elect the same people, just to rotating offices. Ergo, nothing really changes.
F) Takes away a person’s right to vote for whomever they want. This alone should be reason enough.
G) Term limits are lazy. Instead of encouraging engagement and participation, they discourage participation. We want our dirty work to be done for us. You want the politicians to sit up and notice you over the special interests? Reduce the re-election rate from 90% down to 50%. Then, they’d take us seriously.