An unhappy, unfulfilled quarter century has slipped away since several Save the World do-gooder-types hatched a Culver City plan to upgrade government. Bristling with naive vigor, they endorsed a term-limits scheme.
Can anyone out there in Newspaperland ascribe any meaningful improvement in citizen life in the past 25 years to term limits?
Term limits felt like the left’s response to China’s brilliant population-control strategy: Ordering families to have a maximum of one child.
While my concern is the effect of term limits in Culver City, many of us are to blame for term limits imposed elsewhere, especially Washington.
In 1994, conservative writer Dan Greenberg of the Heritage Foundation wrote:
“The movement to limit political terms is steamrolling through American politics. Voters have approved term limits for Congressmen in each of the fifteen states where referenda have been held, with votes averaging over 66 percent in support, and another four to ten states will permit their citizens to vote on congressional term limits this November. If past elections and current polls are any indication, these proposals also will pass easily. In addition, eighteen states and hundreds of cities and counties across the country have adopted term limits for state and local officials.
“Such substantial public support suggests widespread distaste for careerism in politics, as well as a conviction that continual infusion of fresh blood into the federal legislature will be good for both the Congress and the country. Support for term limits extends to significant majorities of diverse demographic groups: polls show that majorities of men, women, blacks, whites, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents all favor term limits, typically by 60 percent or better.”
Pouncing on a random complaint that some men were devoting too many years of their lives to government service, single-issue Save the Worlders breathed life into the birther moment of their era – term limits.
Like many feel-good schemes, it melts in your ears like chocolate ice cream as it gradually seduces your vulnerable senses.
From a presumably non-partisan site, balancedpolitics.org, here are arguments against term limits for members of Congress:
1. Term limits kick out the good leaders who may deserve to stay in office for excellent work.
2. Every job has a learning curve, and Congress is no exception. Any new politicians would have to go through that when they come into office.
3. Politicians who leave office take with them a lot of experience and contacts essential to getting things done. New leaders would have to develop these from scratch.
4. Politicians who are in the last term of office are more likely to ignore the will of the people since they don’t face the wrath of the electorate in the future.
I am strongly persuaded by ex-Mayor Mehaul O’Leary’s argument last week when he was kicked out of office:
After conquering the learning curve, now what? Going away is my reward?
Descendants of Culver City busybody do-gooders did the dirty deed after Mr. O’Leary invested eight years meticulously training to be an effective, efficient hometown legislator.
Now that he is brimming with unique expertise, the Culver City version of Roseanna Roseanna Dana steps up to Mr. O’Leary, looks at both of his Irish eyes, and dares to tell him:
“Never mind.”
