Cynical Nation

"Politics should never be a career." (Adam)

You can say that again!

That is NOT the Founder's design and it's not just the career politician that's an abomination, but the lawyer legislator - THAT innate conflict of interest, lawyers serving in legislatures and shaping the laws they help shape has been a disaster, greatly exacerbated over the course of the 20th Century.

But do you think that less stuff would get done because new people would constantly have to learn the ropes?

That's my one concern with the high-turnover idea. Other than that, I completely see the point.

Tami, you say "less stuff would get done" as if that's a bad thing.

That "stuff" includes all the "wining and dining" (a/k/a BRIBING) done by paid lobbyists (most of them, former politicians), all the pork-barrel spending to "bring home the bacon" to eager and naive consitutents unaware of the huge bill following right behind...and much, much more.

There's no magic skill set that qualifies a person for public office. If there were, a person like Carolyn McCarthy wouldn't be able to go from grieving homemaker one day, to august member of Congress the next, after winning a Congressional seat in Nov, 1996 in the wake of the LIRR Massacre.

McCarthy's husband was murdered and her son permanently disabled by Colin Ferguson, an illegal immigrant from Jamaica in a rampage aboard an LIRR passenger train.

Instead of blaming the carnage inflicted upon her family, on a flawed and lax immigration policy, she chose to blame and inanimate object - a gun.

She could've championed immigration control, she could've championed institutionalizing the mentally and emotionally unstable, but instead she naively chose to champion gun control...and BOTH Houses of Congress are chock full of just such naive and non-critical thinkers.

In the late 1960s William F. Buckley said, "The first 535 names in the Boston phone book could do just as poor a job as the current occupants of Congress." He was right, of course, and it's just as true today.

If it weren't folks like Carolyn McCarthy couldn't so easily move from simple homemaker one day to legislator the next.

But do you think that less stuff would get done because new people would constantly have to learn the ropes?

Here in Virginia, our governors only get one term, so they have to keep learning the ropes, too--and we do just fine.

And presidents only get eight years at most. Why should Senators expect more than their six?

For the most part i agree with you all, but DC is a world of diplomacy and compromise (not to mention all that dirty corruption stuff), and i think Americans, in general, want to elect someone who will "get results"...the best person for the job. With term limits, you have an obstacle to that, an almost arbitrary one.

Why not just throw out representation altogether since the entire enterprise is so corrupted? We could have a democracy 100%! No, you say you don't want that?

The fact that politicians suck doesn't mean the system needs this remedy. Politickers will still have the capacity for corruption with term limits, just as voters look after their own self-interest.

I can't believe i'm making this argument, since i hate the DC atmosphere, but perhaps in the balance it is the best way. The problem with incumbents always winning is bad voters who don't keep their reps in check and term limits would be a band-aid remedy.

For the most part i agree with you all, but DC is a world of diplomacy and compromise (not to mention all that dirty corruption stuff), and i think Americans, in general, want to elect someone who will "get results"...the best person for the job. With term limits, you have an obstacle to that, an almost arbitrary one.

You're going to have to flush that one out a bit, as I fail to see how term limits does anything other than prevent stagnation.

Why not just throw out representation altogether since the entire enterprise is so corrupted? We could have a democracy 100%! No, you say you don't want that?

This is a non-sequitor. I don't think that direct democracy is better than representative democracy. I do think that term limits are better than having no term limits. The two issues are seperate and non-contradictory.

The problem with incumbents always winning is bad voters who don't keep their reps in check and term limits would be a band-aid remedy.

Or maybe the problem is that it makes it easier for political forces to establish themselves, gerrymander, and gain name recognition. In the end, everyone's a nobody before they're elected. It's difficult to tell who would be better or worse. So a name that can be recognized as the sitting official's would naturally have an advantage over some nobody challenger.

Term limits make it impossible to establish oneself, and gets a lot of new blood cycling through.

You'd really have to get a little more specific on how this is just a "band-aid remedy".

ok well, i'm speaking strictly philosophically that it would force an endless parade of starter-wonks every time at the booth and no one would know what anyone was planning to do in office or what. I think whoever the voter thinks is the best candidate should at least be able to be reelected if that's what they want.

And sorry for the non-seq but my point was that shitty polies are going to do bad things, good ones won't (as much) and it's up to the voter to say who's best and let them try to do their job in DC. Yes Strom was nuts, but they wanted his ass there by god and we dealt with it and lived through it somehow.

New-blood can be just as nasty and persnickety as old-blood.

ok well, i'm speaking strictly philosophically that it would force an endless parade of starter-wonks every time at the booth and no one would know what anyone was planning to do in office or what.

I'd be willing to bet that newbies, who have just had actual careers (perhaps as lawyers, economists, generals, or whatever) would have a better idea of how the laws actually effect the real world than incumbants who are insulated by the world of the legislature.

my point was that shitty polies are going to do bad things, good ones won't (as much) and it's up to the voter to say who's best and let them try to do their job in DC.

My sense of it is that generally where incumbants are concerned, people don't as much vote for the good candidate as they just vote against incumbants if they feel they are peculiarly bad. So most representatives just become risk-averse and mediocre, and the voters are satisfied because they aren't making bad things happen actively at any given point.

So, I figure, just shift the incentives structure. If you get more people cycling through, the environment is more competitive and you're likely to get better options to choose from in the first place.

New-blood can be just as nasty and persnickety as old-blood.

I'm not going to pretend that this would be a perfect solution of course, but I do think that I could stand to see a lot more faces to choose from than we get these days.

The fallacy of term limits is that the foilables of the single representative will simply be replaced by the foilables of the political machine. Most of these reps are simply faces for a larger group of players who really make the decisions. Changing the face in the seat in DC isn't going to change the machines that put them there. Boss Tweed, Tom Pendergast, Richard Daly had lots of reps in offices that were fungible assets. Limiting any one would not change the election of a new hand picked puppet. Term limits may make lobbying more expensive as you have a new cast of characters to bribe but it will not change the culture in DC.

The fallacy of term limits is that the foilables of the single representative will simply be replaced by the foilables of the political machine.

It would seem to me that one-term limits would make it more, rather than less, difficult for a political machine to operate, as a machine requires the stability and minimal turnover that continual reelections allow.

"It would seem to me that one-term limits would make it more, rather than less, difficult for a political machine to operate..." (Adam)

Possibly so, though term limits are an imperfect, perhaps even a relatively ineffective solution, at best...though they certainly beat nothing at all.

The best of all possible worlds would be eradicating the corrupt "Party system" altogether. If term limits can be a step toward that, better to take a first step than none at all.