Problem: While in office, U.S. senators and representatives spend too much effort
soliciting contributions to finance their campaign for reelection. I believe this effort
is so great that it exceeds that of their normal job. This means that the people they
represent never get the service they deserve from their representatives.

Solution: Term limits—but not just term limits. If this limit is greater than one term,
the incumbent will devote most of his effort to getting reelected—throughout his entire
tenure in office. However, if the limit is a single term, no U.S. Senator or Represent-
ative will ever spend a minute doing anything about reelection while in office.

A few years ago, I believed that term limits in general deny the rights of the people to
reelect their representatives in every election. However, something has happened in modern
society that our founding fathers did not foresee. They assumed that everyone who ran for
congress would spend a few years in office and then return to his former job. That is, a
career politician was inconceivable. These days it seems that virtually everyone lucky
enough to be elected to high public office intends to hold that office as long as poss-
ible. Furthermore, if they don’t have such intentions in the beginning, the Washington
mindset poisons them; and by the end of their first term, they’re hooked.

You may believe that your senator or representative becomes more valuable as he accumu-
lates experience. If you do, you might oppose term limits of any kind. In fact it's true
that when any candidate for reelection has a couple of terms under his belt and his oppo-
nent has fewer, he is certain to trumpet the fact of his greater experience as making him
more qualified. Unfortunately, most people seem to agree that more experience is better. I
contend that experience leads to a greater probability that the office holder become
either less mentally acute or corrupted. Lord Acton rightly observed, “Power corrupts, and
absolute power corrupts absolutely.” We all know a number of senators who, over the years,
have become chairman or ranking member of an important committee, even though they have
ceased to perform effectively, due either to their advanced age or to having become
corrupted.

But in spite of increased incompetence due to advanced age, or having succumbed to the
lure of corruption, modern incumbents make use of a political tool that helps them gain
reelection. This tool is what we have been calling “pork” for many decades. The office
holder “brings home the pork” by creating public building projects that benefit the people
of his district. He does this by amending any bill to include the enabling legislation.
His constituents love the jobs and other things that these projects create, so they keep
reelecting the person responsible. Senator Byrd of West Virginia, labeled “king of pork,”
is most notorius.

Statistics show that incumbents in general have an advantage over their challengers. The
reasons for this are numerous.

I believe that career politicians are a bad deal for Americans, because clearly, they
spend most of their resources doing whatever is necessary to get elected again and again
and again. It is this belief that has gained priority in my mind, defeating the libertar-
ian belief that citizens should be allowed to reelect any congressman for as long as they
wish.

One question about the one-term limit that must be answered is, “How long should a single
term be?” In the attempt to arrive at the best answer to this question, we must consider
above all, how to accommodate the people. Assuming that the elected person is really
outstanding, the term should be long. On the other hand, if the new representative turns
out to be a whopping disappointment, all would wish that the preestablished term length
had been no more than a year. It must also be determined whether the terms of House and
Senate should be equal and whether the terms within a given state should overlap.

What if all goes well for several years, and then the office-holder does something so bad
that the electorate would likely remove him from office if they could? The answer is
obvious: include in the constitutional amendment the means to accomplish this removal.
This would seem to be a referendum, in which the majority of voters simply decide whether
they want him removed from office.

Having said “yes” to that question, the problem would be that of selecting a replacement.
The best method may be to have the governor appoint someone to serve out the rest of the
term, which happens today when an incumbent becomes unable to serve. The appointee should
be subject to the same possibility of removal for the same reasons.

OK, let's assume that you become convinced of the wisdom of the one-term limit. What do
you think will happen in Congress? Well, as I said earlier, the majority of congressmen
passionately want to be career politicians. Then what chance have we that they would vote
for the one-term limit?—slim or none! Politicians will not budge on this issue until
forced to go along with an enlightened electorate, aided by enough sympathetic members of
the media. Most members of congress would not then dare go against the will of the people.
Hopefully, getting the required amendment to the U.S. Constitution passed and ratified
will be no more difficult than the amendment that established the two-term limit for
president.

By Uncas, October 2007