Congressional term limits

we the people elect them. some do lose touch (we can un-elect them) others do not lose touch bet rather gain in knowledge and skills (we should re-elect them)

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dyslexia
Sure we elect them. After the political parties give you a choice similar to the one we get in a chinese restaurant. One from column a or b.
Most come in all spit and vinegar and after a time turn into self serving political hacks.

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au1929 wrote:

dyslexia
Sure we elect them. After the political parties give you a choice similar to the one we get in a chinese restaurant. One from column a or b.
Most come in all spit and vinegar and after a time turn into self serving political hacks.

well yes but then how does term limits fix this problem?

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dyslexia
It gets rid of those who have grown fat and lazy and used to feeding at the government trough. Replacing them with people who have not as yet become corrupted by the system.

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Thoams Sowell has some good ideas about term limits in his recent series of opinions Political Corruption: Part1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Most of you probably don't think to highly of Sowell but he is rather non-partisian in this series and is worth a read. Just a small exert:

Quote:

At the heart of much government corruption is one simple thing: Re-election. It takes big bucks to run a political campaign and all that most politicians have to sell is the power of government that they control. That is what they do sell in various ways to various special interests.

Term limits try to deal with the problem of re-election but the fatal weakness of term limits is the "s" at the end of the word "limits." So long as there are multiple terms, the first term is going to be spent trying to get re-elected to a second term -- instead of devoting that time to serving the public interest.

What really needs to be done is to put a limit of one term in one office and a waiting period of several years before being elected or appointed to another office in government. In other words, make political careers impossible.

Can people who are not career politicians run the government? People who were not career politicians created the government and the Constitution of the United States of America.

It was one of the most incredible achievements in history. Who among our career politicians today would be capable of such a feat?

If that doesn't work I say we take Charlie Reese's advice and
Throw the Bums Out.

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Re: Congressional term limits

au1929 wrote:

What is your opinion should there be congressional term limits? IMO after a period of time people in congress seem to lose touch with the real world of their constituents. They live in a world untouched by reality.

I don't know what would happen if there were congressial term limits. My guess, going by nothing better than gut instinct is that they will accomplish two things. They will eliminiate personal fiefdoms within the Congress, which is good. But they will create fiefdoms for the party machines, which will administer party discipline in the absence of powerful individuals. To me, living in a country where parliaments are mostly run by party machines, the proposal looks like a net loss.

There is another reason my gut reaction is negative: I believe in self-government. If you, au1929, believe Chuck Schumer has been your senator for long enough, you are free to vote against him. If somebody else disagrees with you and appreciates Schumer's experience in the Senate, he can vote for him. When people consider which candidate to vote for, experience and lack of touch are just two qualities among many others that they look at. I don't see why these two deserve special treatment by the constitution when the others don't.

The right of the people to vote for the candidate they want is extremely important. I won't endorse any constraints on that right unless I have very good reasons. A mere theory about out-of-touch-ness is not a very good reason. Voters should decide this for themselves, candidate by candidate.

(EDIT: If I had read the answers before I posted, I could have cut this post down to four words: "I agree with Dys.")

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Very much agreed with dys as well.

I think the political skills gained with experience are too often undervalued/ overlooked. A guy can have the best ideas in the world, but if he doesn't know how to implement them politically -- build political capital, schmooze, make concessions to reach the larger goal, etc., etc., -- he won't get anywhere.

My ideal is someone who has great ideas AND the knowledge + experience to implement them.

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au1929 wrote:

dyslexia
It gets rid of those who have grown fat and lazy and used to feeding at the government trough. Replacing them with people who have not as yet become corrupted by the system.

In Germany, we had a natural experiment to decide this question. In the 1980s, the Green party entered our federal and state parliaments. Through party-internal regulations, they committed themselves to two-year term limits. If your theory was right, they should have staid "all spit and vinegar", as you put it. But instead, they got just as fat and lazy and corrupted by the system as the others were. Plus, Green politicians tended to be incompetent. Politicis is a craft just like any other, and apprentices are less productive in it than masters. After about 10 years of experimenting, the German Greens removed the term limits from their party charter. What followed was a surge in competence at a constant, about average, level of corruption.

Maybe 2 years are extreme for a term limit, and perhaps that was the problem in Germany. But I don't know of an example where term limits for members of parliament decreased any objective measure of out-of-touchness. Do you, au1929?

(EDIT: Or in other words, I agree with Sozobe too.)

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Thomas wrote

Quote:

They will eliminiate personal fiefdoms within the Congress, which is good. But they will create fiefdoms for the party machines, which will administer party discipline in the absence of powerful individuals.

And what do you think happens under our system at the present time. The party leaders in congress rule the roost. Disagree or vote against them will lose your support in the next election and reduce your chances of getting legislation and pork favoring your constituency. It's vote with your party leadership or else.
When Hillary and others call congress a plantation they were 100% correct.
Although I digress the problem we have is in part because of the two party system. It's go along to get along.
IMO what we could use is the diversity of 2 or 3 more political parties in congress.

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THAT I agree with wholeheartedly. At least not only two.

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au1929 wrote:

And what do you think happens under our system at the present time. The party leaders in congress rule the roost. Disagree or vote against them will lose your support in the next election and reduce your chances of getting legislation and pork favoring your constituency. It's vote with your party leadership or else.

In Germany, party-line votes are the norm, and deviance from that norm requires an 'official' permission by the leader of your fraction. (This is totally at odds with our constitution, which says that MPs are bound by their conscience only, but it's how the system actually works.) Judging by the normalcy of non-partyline-votes in your Congress, you haven't even begun to see the power of runaway party machines in America.

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sozobe wrote:

THAT I agree with wholeheartedly. At least not only two.

Somehow I don't think that's what you told the wannabe Nader voters in 2004. Wink

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Er...

Touche.

On the other hand, there was no chance of him accomplishing anything other than damaging the less evil of the two parties in the current two-party system.

I dunno how the conversion from two-party to viable more-than-two-party system would occur.

Really good Independent prez candidate who gets elected, maybe... :-?

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sozobe wrote:

I dunno how the conversion from two-party to viable more-than-two-party system would occur.

Really good Independent prez candidate who gets elected, maybe... :-?

I think it would help if liberals recognized that federalism can be their friend. Fifty years ago, the Socialists didn't have a chance on the federal level, but they did manage to win the elections for the mayor of Milwaukee. Along this line, I can imagine a Green becoming Mayor of San Francisco, or governor of Vermont. A similar idea inspires the Free State Project, which tries to get lots of libertarians moving to New Hampshire to turn at least one state in the union libertarian. I do believe that institutionwise, such bottom-up approaches can still work. If the liberal mainstream adjusted its attitude about federalism, I believe it would be taking an important first step to rolling back the conservative movement in America.

The main problem with this approach that American liberals, who need it the most right now, are locked up in a mindset that is fixed on controlling the federal government. The same mindset views federalism as an ideological facade of evil Southern racists. This must frustrate any non-conformist liberal who might otherwise try to reform the country bottom-up.

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Thomas wrote:

In Germany, party-line votes are the norm, and deviance from that norm requires an 'official' permission by the leader of your fraction. (This is totally at odds with our constitution, which says that MPs are bound by their conscience only, but it's how the system actually works.) Judging by the normalcy of non-partyline-votes in your Congress, you haven't even begun to see the power of runaway party machines in America.

It's just a different appoach to the English "whip system" - the procedure and realisation is nearly exactly the same, though.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

Thomas wrote:
In Germany, party-line votes are the norm, and deviance from that norm requires an 'official' permission by the leader of your fraction. (This is totally at odds with our constitution, which says that MPs are bound by their conscience only, but it's how the system actually works.) Judging by the normalcy of non-partyline-votes in your Congress, you haven't even begun to see the power of runaway party machines in America.

It's just a different appoach to the English "whip system" - the procedure and realisation is nearly exactly the same, though.

I am not familiar with the English system, so I must ask a stupid question: What do you mean by "it"? Are you saying that the English system is similar to America's or to Germany's? If you're saying it's similar to Germany's, both system must be fairly different from America's judging by the percentage of votes that are not party-line.

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Sorry. Yes, I think we have a very sinilar system then used in the English/UK parliament with and by whips - no wonder, we adopted that in 1947/8 :wink:

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I frequently read Tom DeLay and Dennis Hastert referred to as "the majority whip". So my guess is that America has a formally similar system, but different traditions about its implementation.

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GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION > in the middle of the page infose about whips.

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