That is a structural problem of politics with which supporters of term limits must cope. But the organization U.S. Term Limits is an unnecessary impediment to term limits. As the House votes this week on the issue, consider what happens when a reform movement’s bandwagon is boarded by people ignorant of, or indifferent to, the principal rationale for the reform.
USTL is a bellicose advocate of term limits, and, like fanatics through the ages, it fancies itself the sole legitimate keeper of the flame of moral purity. However, it has actually become the career politician’s best friend. That is why it was opponents of term limits who invited a USTL spokesman to testify at recent House hearings on the subject. Opponents understand that USTL’s obscurantism, dogmatism and bullying embarrass the cause.
The primary argument for term limits is not that, absent limits, there will be a permanent class of entrenched incumbents shielded from challengers by advantages of office. Although incumbents who choose to seek re-election still are remarkably safe–91 percent of them won in the turbulence of 1994 and 94 percent won in 1996–most members of Congress arrived there in this decade. (This rotation in office has been produced partly by something the nation does not wish to rely on–revulsion arising from scandals and other malfeasance.) And the primary argument for term limits is not that Congress is insufficiently ““responsive’’ and hence must be made ““closer to the people.’’ Rather, the primary argument is that we need ““constitutional space’’ (the phrase is from Harvard’s Harvey Mansfield) between representatives and the represented.
Term limits are a simple, surgical, Madisonian reform. By removing careerism–a relatively modern phenomenon–as a motive for entering politics and for behavior in office, term limits can produce deliberative bodies disposed to think of the next generation rather than the next election. This is the argument favored by those who favor term limits not because of hostility toward Congress, but as an affectionate measure to restore Congress to its rightful role as the First Branch of government. This would put the presidency where it belongs (and usually was during the Republic’s first 150 years), which is more toward the margin of political life.
Intelligent people of good will differ about whether term limits are a good idea, and supporters of limits differ concerning the appropriate maximum length of legislative careers. Most supporters consider six House and two Senate terms a temperate solution. It is symmetrical (12 years in each chamber) and allows enough time for professional learning, yet removes the careerism that produces officeholders who make only risk-averse decisions while in office. USTL is not merely eccentric but preposterous and antithetical to dignified democracy because it insists that three House terms is the only permissible option.
If USTL merely espoused this position, it could simply be disregarded as a collection of cranks. What makes it deeply subversive of the term limits movement is its attempt to enforce its three-House-terms fetish by using a device that degrades what the movement seeks to dignify–the principle of deliberative representation. Last November in nine states with 30 House members (19 of them Republicans, whose party platform endorses term limits) USTL sponsored successful campaigns to pass pernicious initiatives. These stipulate precisely the sort of term limits measures for which those states’ members should vote, and further stipulate that unless those members vote for them and only for them, then when those members seek re-election there must appear next to their names on the ballot this statement: ““Violated voter instruction on term limits.''
More than 70 percent of Americans favor the principle of term limits without having fixed, let alone fierce, preferences about details. But USTL, tendentiously presenting meretricious ““evidence,’’ baldly and farcically asserts that Americans believe that term limitation involving six House terms is not worth having. Because of USTL’s coercive device of ““instruction,’’ there may have to be a dozen votes this week on various term limits amendments to the Constitution. And USTL’s ham-handedness probably will produce a decline in votes for the most popular proposal–six House and two Senate terms. No measure is yet going to receive the 290 House votes or 67 Senate votes needed to send an amendment to the states for ratification debates. However, USTL’s rule-or-ruin mischief will splinter the voting bloc that last year produced 227 votes for a 12-years-for-each-chamber amendment.
The thinking person’s reason for supporting term limits is to produce something that USTL’s ““instruction’’ of members mocks–independent judgment. USTL, which thinks of itself as serving conservatism, should think again. It should think of that noble fountain of conservatism, Edmund Burke. In 1774, having been elected to Parliament by Bristol voters, Burke delivered to them an admirably austere speech of thanks, in which he rejected the notion that a representative should allow ““instructions’’ from voters to obviate his independent judgment. He said ““government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment’’ and asked: ““What sort of reason is that in which the determination precedes the discussion?''
In the 1850s some Abolitionists were interested less in effectiveness than in narcissistic moral display, interested less in ending slavery than in parading their purity. The abolition of slavery required someone (Lincoln) who was anathema to fanatical abolitionists. Similarly, restoration of deliberative democracy will require patient people, not USTL’s exhibitionists.
