With all the back and forth about political corruption and calls from prominent pols to enact term limits on members of Congress … my position on that matter remains fundamentally unchanged.
We don’t need mandated term limits for politicians who run for Congress. Indeed, we already have them. They occur every two years for House members and every six years for U.S. senators. They are elections.
I also want to disabuse you of the myth that Congress is overrun by longtime House members and senators who have been in office since The Flood. A Congressional Quarterly study done years ago pointed to a healthy turnover of politicians serving in Congress. The study showed that a tiny minority of lawmakers had been in office for more than, say, three or four terms.
As a practical matter, getting Congress to approve a constitutional amendment mandating term limits is problematic, to be sure. That is what it would take for such a proposal to become law. We have our share of pols who say they favor term limits, then they run for re-election to their umpteenth term. Some of them do so successfully; some do not.
There you have it. Term limits at work in Congress.
I once harbored the notion that we should repeal the 21st Amendment limit presidents to two terms. Enacted in 1951, the amendment was meant to prevent presidents from seeking more than two terms after President Roosevelt was elected to office four times. He died just a few weeks after taking office for his fourth term.
The office does take its toll on the occupant, as FDR’s demise — in his mid-60s — demonstrated. Therefore, keep the 21st Amendment on the books.
Members of Congress, though, do not need to be ordered out of office. The voters will have their say if enough of them think their congressman or woman is doing a lousy job.