Tuesday, July 25, 2006

 

My Opposition to Term Limits

Are term limits for elected officials a solution in search of a problem? I have spoken with several individuals who favor limiting the terms of their representatives as well as the Governor and other national and state officials. I have read arguments by various pundits and others who favor term limits.

I admit that I have never favored term limits for anything. I think that the President should be allowed to run for a third, fourth, and fifth term if he wants to and if his health will permit it. I do not think that members of either the national or the State or the municipal legislature should be restricted from running for office as many times as they choose. However, I would like in this essay to at least mention some of the arguments presented in favor of term limits and give my opinions of them.

What inspired me to write this article was an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times for Sunday, July 23. It was written by Mark P. Petracca and was written in opposition to proposals to extend term limits for Los Angeles City council members and members of the California Legislature. Mr. Petracca’s article was a polemic in favor of keeping term limits as they are, rather than lengthening them, as some are proposing. Mr. Petracca makes four points:

  1. The public favors keeping term limits as strict as they are now.

  2. One of the dangers cited by term limit opponents when they were submitted to the voters was that inexperienced legislators would be easily influenced by lobbyists. Mr. Petracca argues that lobbyists have no more influence on legislators than they had before term limits were adopted.

  3. Another argument against term limits was that legislators would be termed out of office about the time that they had learned how the legislature operates and how to accomplish things with legislation. Mr. Petracca argues that termed-out legislators can still serve in city councils and will have gained the experience to deal with the legislature.

  4. Mr. Petracca argues that it is desirable to have a rotation in office to overcome the advantages of incumbency. One of the big advantages of incumbency, especially to the political party in power, is that it entrenches the party’s position.

In summary, Mr. Petracca argues that many of the bad effects predicted for term limits have not shown up, and so we should keep them just as they are. I can argue just as convincingly that term limits don’t seem to have cured many evils of our system of elective government, so we should treat term limits as an experiment that hasn’t done anything for us and might as well be abandoned.

According to my recollection, here are some arguments that were and are still advanced to justify term limits:

  1. It is undesirable to create a class or a vocation of professional politicians. Persons elected to office should not have the expectation that they are entering a life-long job. Let them serve for a few years, then return to their previous occupations and experience the impact of the laws they have enacted.

  2. The power of incumbency is such that it is difficult for a challenger to defeat an incumbent, even in an honest election. Term limits destroys incumbency. The result should be a legislature more responsive to the needs of the public.

  3. Certain elected officials, especially legislators who represent their own districts, act in ways that please their own constituents but harm, or at least annoy, almost everyone else. Term limits provides a neutral, non-judgmental way of eliminating these irritants. (Think of Willie Brown, who was admired in his own district but despised by many other Californians.)

Let me respond to these arguments.

  1. Although cartoonists and opinion writers deride the career of “politician,” it remains a fact that a good and successful politician is a person of great skill and tact. Politics is the art of the possible. Politicians grapple with seemingly irreconcilable differences of opinion by the public and find compromises that each faction can accept, albeit grudgingly. I no more want to have important policies of government determined by inexperienced amateurs than I would like my medical care determined by amateur physicians who were term limited to return to other occupations within eight years. I regard politics and law as professions just as admirable as medicine and teaching. I think it is a good thing to have available the services of experienced professional politicians. Even Mr. Petracca concedes as much with his argument that termed-out legislators can be useful as members of city councils.

  2. We have seen that term limits have not produced more competitive legislative election contests. It is less the power of incumbency than the nature of the district that determines who gets elected and reelected. Like many States, California has created a set of Congressional, Assembly, and State Senate districts that are not competitive. A given district is safe for the nominee of whichever party the district was assigned to. This arrangement of districts is the result of an agreement between the two parties in the State Legislature to create as many safe districts as possible. A result is that the nominee of the party favored by the district is sure to be elected. The selection of legislators takes place in the primary election, where only the dedicated party extremists bother to vote. The notion of having competitive elections is a good one because it would favor the election of legislators who have had to commit themselves to policies favored by majorities in their districts, rather than majorities in the party primary elections. Term limits has not produced such legislators. A different cure is called for.

  3. For reasons just discussed, the “obnoxious legislator” problem isn’t permanently solved by term limits. A legislator can be just as obnoxious after one term in office as after ten. Here, too, a different cure is needed.

I agree that California (and many other States) had problems at the time term limits were adopted. I thought at the time and still do that creating term limits was an example of a complex problem for which a solution was proposed that was simple, inexpensive, and wrong. The problem of inadequate responsiveness of legislatures to public needs is still present. Term limits have not provided a solution.
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