Term limits are not a cure all
To the Editor:
To prescribe term limits for what ails Congress is like offering bleach for COVID-19. It can’t help. It is likely to make matters worse. It’s a distraction from what ought to be done.
Term limits, adopted by initiative, ruined Florida’s legislature when they took effect in 2000. They didn’t just purge the most experienced members. They also insured that new ones would not be around long enough to remember or learn the mistakes of the past. Worse, it put them even more under the thumbs of the lobbyists and House and Senate leadership cliques.
As in most legislatures, the Florida Senate president and House speaker make committee assignments and decide what bills will be brought to the floor for a chance to pass. It’s not democratic. The presiding officers are chosen up to six years in advance solely by the other members of the majority party who’ll be term limited. On one occasion, as few as 13 people made that fateful choice for speaker. Six years later, he boasted that his members were “like sheep,” waiting to be told what to do.
Some of us watching from the press galleries saw how it tamed people who, before term limits, would have stood up for themselves and their constituents. And that so-called “reform” did nothing to accelerate turnover. Rather than run against entrenched incumbents whom the lobbyists would favor, aspiring lawmakers simply began waiting for term limits to open their chosen seats.
That’s what would surely happen to the Congress too, where there’s too little competition as it is. What’s wrong with Congress can be said in two words: money and gerrymandering. Both could be cured in the same way as it would take to adopt term limits: constitutional amendment. That’s difficult, to be sure, but the effort should be spent on what’s worthwhile, not what’s wrong.
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One amendment should instruct the Supreme Court that “Congress and the states may establish restrictions on money to be spent directly or indirectly on election and referendum campaigns.”
The other should tell the court that “congressional districts may not be created to advantage or disadvantage any political party or candidate.”
It’s the Supreme Court, after all, that put our government on the auction block with a series of amendments dating as far back as 1976 that equated the spending of money to free speech. The result? Paid “speech” has drowned out free speech. The Supreme Court also gave free reign to gerrymandering by refusing to overturn it except where the motivation is clearly to discriminate against racial minorities. Republicans, Democrats and minority party members are entitled to no protection.
There are 435 seats in the U.S. House. The Cook Political Report rates only 18 of them as tossups next year. A recent letter in The Smoky Mountain News recommends a website that calls for a constitutional convention to authorize term limits for Congress. A constitutional convention is a bad idea for many reasons, not the least of which is the vast sums of money that would be raised and spent to control it
Despite what the sponsors claim, there would be no limits on the damage it could propose. Remember that the first convention, in 1787, was supposed to only recommend amendments to the ineffective Articles of Confederation, not replace them. A look at that website shows that it’s also a front for President Trump, which is another good reason to shun it. Term limits are a beguiling notion, to be sure. But they’re powerfully antidemocratic. The people should be able to elect whom they want as long as they want. What they need is fair districting and campaigns shaped by ideas rather than torrents of dark money.
Martin A. Dyckman
Asheville
