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The Argument for Term Limits
President Elect Trump recently had an interesting idea: drain the swamp. Term limits for elected politicians would allow far more turnover, which would in turn allow for a greater diversity of politicians to be elected. It is almost a no-brainer when you consider how many benefits the incumbent politician has over the challenger.
If term limits are a no-brainer then why don’t we have them already? By far the most popular explanation is simply that politicians will not vote to term limit themselves; therefore we cannot get term limits. This is obviously an oversimplification, however. Surely if term limits are obviously good, then some ambitious politician would support them in order to build his or her reputation as a principled individual. This leads to the second explanation: term limits are actually bad.
A 2006 study conducted by the NCSL is often cited as a comprehensive discussion of the negative impact of term limits. It is a “study” that is conducted by a fancy sounding organization with a four-letter acronym. Furthermore, it comes in PDF; just like a real scientific article. Here is part of the introduction discussing their methodology,
To complete this project, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Council of State Governments, the State Legislative Leaders Foundation and a group of distinguished political scientists from universities around the country worked together for three years, conducting an in-depth study of the effects of legislative term limits. The findings of the study are based on the results of two major surveys; a collection of data on the individual characteristics of all state legislators; interviews with hundreds of legislators, legislative staff and other observers of the legislative process; and a large body of data on the legislative process compiled from nine states.
That certainly sounds official and “sciency!” How could we dirt farming plebes possibly argue with that? Except that it is totally questionable. This isn’t physics or chemistry where there were control groups and a concerted effort by many different research groups to refute the theory as occurs in real scientific practice. This is political science done with subjective interviews, “expert” opinions, and a couple of surveys. We shouldn’t pretend that this is Einstein proving gravitational lensing. It most definitely is not.
A cynical interpretation of this description is that the study was conducted and supported by technocrats, bureaucrats, and career politicians; all of which have reason to oppose term limits. Can we really trust the opinions of people like this? Obviously we should approach all information skeptically, but this smacks of opinion wrapped up in the garb of “science”. This group has the right to protect their positions just as we have the right to argue against it.
Let’s take a look at what it actually says in the study. I found two angles repeatedly used by the study that supposedly reveal negatives: (1) legislatures are too complicated for term limits because they make the learning curve too steep for newly elected politicians and (2) term limits encourages uncivil behavior between legislators. As we shall see, both of these are a matter of perspective.
The go-to criticism of term limits is that it leads to uninformed lawmakers. According to this criticism, lawmaking is like being a doctor or engineer in that it requires a form of expertise. You wouldn’t let just anyone perform heart surgery or fix your car’s engine, so why would you let just anyone participate in the legislature? They really want this to scare us, so they even go so far as to claim that new and ignorant lawmakers are easier to manipulate by the evil lobbyists.
However, is it really the case that we need experts to run our lives? That doesn’t sound right at all. As far as I am concerned, I am an expert on my own life. Being a lawmaker simply isn’t the same as being a doctor or an engineer. It’s a bad analogy. Similarly, what kind of legislative system do we have that requires such intense expertise? Is that really what the founders had in mind: a massively complex bureaucracy that can only be understood and operated by people who have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of political power alone? I don’t think so. They even go so far as to claim that 12-year term limits are not enough time for lawmakers to become sufficiently acquainted with the process! 12 years is too short a time?!? If that’s true, the system is in need of an overhaul anyway.
The second criticism is that term limits make the legislators uncivil towards one another. There are two parts to this: (1) term limits make new lawmakers more likely to challenge their party elders for leadership and (2) term limits make bipartisan committees more political and partisan and prevent the different sides from working together to perform their legislative function. That sounds bad, right? I don’t think so.
Term limits remove the tenure system for leadership selection. Without term limits the lawmakers have to wait for their turn to be a leader. It also makes new lawmakers bolder in opposition to current leaders because they know that the leader cannot punish them down the line. Now think about that for a minute: is it really appropriate that there is a tenure system in the first place? Shouldn’t we want the best lawmaker to be the leader regardless of the amount of time he has put in? Tenure removes accountability, which is pretty much anti-merit. Also, wouldn’t fear of punishment down the line encourage our lawmakers to blindly follow the leader? How can that possibly be construed as a real benefit?
Term limits also supposedly make bipartisan committees less civil. Apparently, committees are supposed to be fun, safe spaces, where everyone works together to pass laws and grow the government. What about the duty of lawmakers to represent their constituents and oppose ideas that conflict with their stated ideology? It sounds like committees are currently places where everyone goes along to get along. That’s nice and all but… doesn’t that encourage groupthink? Isn’t that how we got our national debt so high in the first place? Personally, I want our lawmakers to fight in committees and stand on principle. Isn’t that how it is supposed to be? The system is rigged in a number of different ways, and term limits won’t fix all the problems. It is however a good start.
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We already have term limits. They are called elections. It’s We The People that have got lazy and don’t keep track of what’s going on in Congress.
Look, if I have a good representative, one that I believe is making the right choices, I want to keep him. If not, I’ll vote for someone else. But I keep the choice.
Wrong. I don’t have any way to vote out your corrupt representative who uses the power of incumbency to screw the other districts. For that we need term limits.
Great first post, Kristoffer! We passed State term limits in Michigan, and overall, it works very well. I don’t care how much pork my representative brings to my community, 8 years is enough for anyone, and since we live in a world where the majority of voters are lazy, and simply vote for the incumbent, we need this.
This is one of my favorite topics, and I must say you’ve put more wisdom into that many (or that few) words on the topic than I’ve ever seen before.
I think there is some merit to the notion that extremely short term limits make for ignorant lawmakers who are at the mercy of their staffs and lobbyists. But term limits don’t have to be extremely short in order to do a lot of good. I favor moderate term limits that will weed out those who have been around long enough to have been completely corrupted by power, and who rule through the power of incumbency. Ted Kennedy should not have been Senator for as long as he was, for example. He even had some redeeming social value when he was younger, but by the time he left office he was completely corrupt and a menace to our constitutional democracy.
I agree. If people don’t think term limits work they should take a look at Michigan where they’ve done a lot of good. The governing class hates them, of course, and some of those who initially favored term limits now don’t like to become term limited themselves. All the more reason to keep them.
As tough as it is to lose a good person to a term limit, it seems to me to be worth it.
While there is some merit to the concern that institutional memory gets lost, so does institutional laziness born of a safe district. There is also some merit to the argument that term limits transfer power to lobbyists. The fallacy there is that the lobbyists have to scramble to create new relationships legislators as their old ones get term-limited out.
To be sure, term limits would create new forms of election gamesmanship. To me it is worth it.
I think we would a constitutional amendment to implement term limits at the federal level.
Incumbents regularly proclaim their seniority on vital committees in their re-election pitches. That seniority instead of merit drives committee assignments is a key condemnation of the current system. Even well-intentioned congress-critters have to play this game to get anything done for their constituents, perpetuating it. Term limits would chop the catch-22 off at the knees. Ten years ago I would have agreed with @batjac. I’m older and wiser now.
In Congress you are forced to play a game to get ahead that makes some corrupt. If you want to know how that works out look at our current iteration of congress. They don’t get anything done because they are worried about how outside forces will react. @batjac since you are a member of this website I would assume you are an informed voter. If more of the populace was as informed as you we would not need term limits.
Why is it that this question only arises when the Republicans are (or are about to be) in control?
We need more than term limits. We need a number of years served limit. The political elected positions length of service is a problem but to my mind the issue involves the bureaucracy class as much if not more than the political class. You have these people in the bureaucracy that have never been elected and effectly have no constraints. No matter which party holds power the bureaucrats still reign supreme. We need a year of service cap. You can only work for the government X number of years and you are out to the private sector and let somebody else suck of the government teat for a while. Spread the wealth and limit the corruption.
That’s exactly right. The wealth you are talking about is the inside information that one can get there. Also, more common people with security clearances wouldn’t be a bad idea either.
Yes on term limits. How many years is probably important to really think about but generally I agree that people just seem to think they are something special when they are in “public service” too long.
I despise the whole notion of seniority. It stinks.
Ah, now you’ve said something I can disagree with. I don’t think it’s a matter of information so much as self-interest and corruption. People don’t keep their long-term members of Congress because they lack information about the bad things they are doing. They keep them because they bring home the bacon. Newspaper editors make their endorsements on the basis of bringing home the goodies to their district. Even a leftwing newspaper might criticize a leftwing state representative who doesn’t bring home enough pork. I’ve seen it happen here in Michigan.
It doesn’t.
(Welcome Kristoffer!)
Some arguments against term limits:
I think most of the reasons for term limits are not especially compelling.
I think the best reason for term limits is if the office is not intended to be for career politicians, but for a regular citizens who take time out to represent their community.
(I’ve said this before, but…) My proposal would be an amendment specifying that members of congress would only be eligible for reelection if the budget was balanced. Super simple, and kills two birds with one stone.
See #2
Much of our Constitution is for the purpose of removing choice from the voting public directly or through their elected representatives. This is more of the same sort of thing.
What we need is a change in mentality that would lead people to believe it is okay to enrich themselves at the expense of the People. Without that term limits is a moot point.
The really dangerous politicians are among those who don’t use their offices to enrich themselves at the expense of the people.
Good article. Good points. But only constitutionally limited government, smaller budgets, states rights, tax simplification, and regulatory destruction will stem the rot, the bloat, the distraction. Start there and maybe they’ll even agree to go home by force. When governments get too big, too intrusive, too remote and unaccountable, only corruption sometimes gets priorities right. We really must move the corruption back to the cities and states where it started and where it at least must show something real after the deal.
That is true as well. I will admit there is no panacea for the issue. I feel that term limits is a great start. I would love to address other ways to fix the issues in Congress.
I respectfully disagree. What has happened with term limits in Michigan is that every few years we play musical chairs with our representation. A representative who is term-limited runs for an open senate seat that is being vacated by a term-limited senator; a term-limited senator runs for another open slot, or picks up an appointment in the state bureaucracy, or runs for (or is appointed to) a judgeship. Somehow the people who want to be politicians just keep finding new slots to occupy. And to the extent that there are truly newbies in some slots, they have to spend a significant amount of time learning the rules, developing relationships, etc. I agree with @batjac that term limits are an excuse for lazy voters. Just as we vote people into offices based on their last name – or their race or gender – we vote people into office based on their incumbency. Until we wake up and devote some of our time to understanding and following what our elected representatives are actually doing, and then voting accordingly, we get the representation we deserve.
I always go back and forth on the question. We shouldn’t need term limits. We have the power, should we choose (or be wise enough) to use it, to limit every elected individual to one term by simply never voting for them. In the current state of things, however, we lack either the will or the wisdom to exercise this power. Term limits only treat the symptom of the disease rather than the disease itself.
Well, if you’re going to dismiss the experience of the people who have actually looked at the question, I don’t know what there is to say. Many people who supported term limits stopped once they saw what actually happened when term limits were imposed in California. “Lobbyists taking over the legislature, and the legislature handing huge amounts of power to the executive” isn’t a theory -it’s what happened in California. It’s happened in other states that imposed term limits. It also made representatives a lot more activist, because the representatives know they have only so many years (8 to 12, usually) to make a big mark so they can run for the next office up the ladder. This makes them more interested in pork, not less; and more interested in big, expensive, largely symbolic, policies.
No, we don’t have a formal control group, because we don’t have alternate earth 2 -but we do have the states that didn’t impose term limits, and we also have how the states that imposed term limits changed -and they generally weren’t in good directions.
An hour in the library saves a month in the lab.
This has been argued for decades. Rudy Giuliani in NYC was term limited out (as Bloomberg would have been, had he not bribed the city council). However, such term limits are unconstitutional, sayeth the SCOTUS.
U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995)…SCOTUS ruled that states cannot impose qualifications for prospective members of the U.S. Congress stricter than those specified in the Constitution. The decision invalidated the Congressional term limit provisions of 23 states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Term_Limits,_Inc._v._Thornton
Despite this, term limits have had their uses. Tom Foley lost his speakership in 1992 by opposing limits.
“Foley…challeng(ed) the constitutionality of a state law setting eligibility requirements on federal offices. Foley won… courts declaring that states didnt have the authority…to limit the terms of federal officeholders.
However, in Foley’s bid for a 16th term in the House, his Republican opponent, George Nethercutt, used the issue against him, properly citing the caption of the federal case brought by Foley, “Foley against the People of the State of Washington”. Nethercutt vowed that if elected, he would not serve more than three terms in the House (but ultimately served for five terms). Foley lost in a narrow race….by just under 4,000 votes.
Foley became the first sitting Speaker of the House to lose his bid for re-election since Galusha A. Grow in 1862.”
Yes, this sums up very well the way I feel about it. I can definitely see the problem, and can see how term limits would be a good thing in a lot of specific cases. But what makes me uneasy is that this essentially boils down to taking choice away from the electorate, because we don’t like the way they’re voting.
Voters have the right to make poor choices. That’s how democracy works. If our electorate is lazy and therefore tends always to vote for incumbents, well, that‘s the problem. Term limits wouldn’t really fix that. Lazy voters would find other shortcuts and would still make poor choices.
My experience in politics informs me that a majority of voters will never have the time or patience to be involved enough to make good decisions and that there are no perfect solutions to this problem. Yes, legislators play musical chairs, but when has this not been so? Forcing them to give up power in one area and compete for it in another helps a lot.
I talk to people all the time about political involvement, and most of them just don’t have the time in the day to devote to reading about issues and politics. The best I can hope for is to get them interested in local issues that affect them directly, and get them to attend a public meeting or write a letter. One busy executive told me that after commuting and working, it was hard to find time with his wife and kids, and he just didn’t have the time to get caught up on politics.
We like to say that people get the government they deserve, but that’s because it’s a priority in our lives to be involved and to influence elections.
This is a far better argument for limiting the power of higher governments than for term limits.
Argument #10,000 for term limits; the current occupant of the White House. If anyone thinks he wouldn’t have run again if he could have, you’re deeply mistaken. His vanity would have forced him to it.
We must be modest (being conservatives) about what term limits would accomplish. It’s not a one-size fits all solution, but it is a valuable structural tool to, on occasion, drain the swamp (at least portions of it). The Constitution is about structure; this is a structural support to mitigate against a “governing class”. To actually rotate the governing class out is going to take more work (massive downsizing and reorganization of the executive branch, for starters).
I’m all in favor of modest term limits and think it would be a great start, but I’m not putting all my eggs in that basket.
One of my favorite reforms would be to outlaw constituent services, or at least to outlaw all behind-the-scenes communications between members of Congress (including their staff members) and administrative agencies. The way it is now, Congress creates problems for us by creating abusive agencies, and then gets credit at election time for intervening with these agencies on behalf of constituents.
Our Constitution treats only the symptom of the disease, too. That’s why it’s such a great thing. Who would want a government that tried to cure lack of wisdom or lack of will, or was allowed to even try?