On the face of it, the call for term limits is quite understandable. We have a fairly unresponsive legislature that keeps spending more and more of our money, as we see less and less of it. We have potentially catastrophic problems looming not to far ahead of us - the collapse of social security and medicare being just two among them. The appearance is that only special interests (and their money) get any recognition in Washington; the seemingly endless examples of pork barrel spending, back room deals and corruption (by both parties) just go to reinforce that perception. You know things have to be bad for libertarian groups like Cato to advocate term limits. One would think that the last thing a libertarian wants is for the government to put constraints on who a person can vote for, or for how long; the concept of citizen legislature not withstanding. But that just shows how fed up they have become with the current system, and they have just thrown up their hands at the prospect of it even ever being fixed.
While term limits seems to be a reasonable answer to the problems outlined above, it only mask the real problem in our society, and may in fact be detrimental to our representative form of government. It is said, by proponents, that term limits will bring back the "citizen legislature"; that people will take some time out of their private lives and devote a few years to public service, since there is no longer a prospect of making Congress a life's career (hello Strom Thurmond). Our country will then have the benefit of having a Congress made up of people from all walks of life who are directly in touch with what is really going on in the world today, and not just in Washington. It is argued that these "citizen politicians" will be more responsive to the wants and needs of the American public and we will all be the better for it. How nice; but things rarely work out as rosily as all that. One thing that proponents of term limits do not consider is the fact that if you have a Congress full of people who don't have to worry about being re-elected, don't want to be re-elected, can't be re-elected; you have a Congress full of people who don't have to be responsive to the American people, might not want to be responsive to the American people, and probably won't be responsive to the American people. We will have created a Congress full of free agents who might only represent their own interests and not those of their constituents or the nation as a whole.
How is that different from our current system you might ask? It is very different in one major aspect, for the American people currently have a power over members of Congress; a great power that they rarely, if ever, exercise. The American people have the power to take a Congressman's or Senator's job away - the most dreaded penalty imaginable for a politician. If a politician really thought that he could lose his job if he didn't support a certain issue or vote for a certain law - guess what, he would support the issue and vote for the law. Politicians will actually follow the will of the people, their constituents, if they are afraid enough. All the money in the world isn't going to do the politician any good if he is out of a job. For politicians, the money is just a means to an end; the end being voted back into Congress term after term. If politicians really felt that their jobs were being threatened, constantly and vigilantly being threatened; they would listen to the voters a lot more than they would listen to special interests. Special interests can give the politicians money; the voters can give the politician a pink slip. The vote is louder than the dollar. But alas, voters don't use this weapon, this atomic bomb, that they can dangle over the heads of politicians like a damocles. Why don't voters want to use this power? Do they even realize that they have it? Are we in danger of losing the power; our constitutional right to vote? We'll explore these issues in the next essay.
"Law, being a sign of Corruption in Man; many laws are signs of Corruption of a State."
JSC