I'd like term and age limits, but neither is going to happen, so I don't pine for them, no matter how logical they could seem to be.
Term Limits are a pet peeve of mine.
I'll state to start that I fully realize that I am in the minority and it is a very small minority here. I know that, so no need to point it out.
That said, they are a disaster. We enacted them for State Legislators a few years ago and I'll tell you the end results:
- Cross-aisle cooperation in the State House has almost completely disappeared. Several reasons for this:
- With term limits the individual Legislators are not going to be around long enough to care about functional working relationships with Legislators on the other side of the aisle. If you and I were opposite party but reasonably expected to be in the Legislature for 15-20 or more years, we could build a rapport that would be useful to both of us down the road. Now that we KNOW we only have eight years, by the time we are in a position to actually do anything we only have MAYBE four years left, what good is a rapport with some other guy who is also going to be gone even sooner?
- If I cooperate cross-aisle it irks my party and kills my post-Legislature job prospects.
- Legislators from opposite parties simply aren't together long enough to learn who they can disagree with but still work with and who is just an enemy.
- The Governor has gotten a LOT more powerful. Before term limits the Legislators had their own power bases. They were WELL KNOWN names in their districts who were likely to hold on to their seats for many years regardless of what the Governor thought of them. Now, the Legislators need a new job in a few years and haven't been around long so they are in no position to fight with a Governor from their own party.
- The Parties have become MUCH more powerful. This is due to the Legislators' need to find a new job in a few years. When Legislators could stay in the Legislature as long as they could get reelected they didn't need the party to find them a job in eight years but now they do. Consequently, bucking the party has become MUCH more risky.
- The bureaucrats have become much more powerful. Back before term limits, if I was a bad bureaucrat, and you were a Legislator, you *MIGHT* be able to get rid of me. Now, I KNOW I'll be here longer than you so I could care less. Also, since you are here for only a short time, by the time you know I'm a bad bureaucrat, you are already on your way out the door.
- The Lobbyists have become much more powerful. Since the Legislators are all new and have no idea what is going on, the Lobbyists write all the legislation.
Bottom line, if you say you are for term limits, understand that what you mean is that you want less bipartisanship, more powerful lobbyists, more powerful parties, and worse bureaucrats. You can't have term limits without those things.
That said, I don't know how I feel about age limits. On the surface they seem like a really good idea but I see them as very similar to term limits. They are an inherently anti-democratic "cure" to a symptom of a much larger problem.
Why do people support them (both term limits and age limits):
We support them because we aren't happy with the officials that we elected. Well . . . we SHOULD fix that by electing better officials. We don't so we enact anti-democratic term limits and age limits and nothing changes because we haven't fixed the underlying problem. We still elect officials that we are not happy with but now we turn them over more often and they are younger.
Part of it is that we (as an electorate) simply are not "engaged". Ohio enacted the age limit for Judges because there were some ridiculous situations with elderly judges unable to manage a courtroom because they had declined physically and mentally getting reelected. We (the electorate) *SHOULD* have solved that by learning the situation and voting out the few elderly judges that were simply unable to do the job. Instead we solved it by sweeping out all 70+ judges including a LOT of very good judges that could still do their jobs.
Part of it is polarization. In the 2022 Senate elections most Republican leaning voters in Georgia and most Democratic leaning voters in Pennsylvania voted for candidates that were mentally challenged (to put it VERY nicely). Why? Well, they did it because we are so polarized that most voters now believe that "My teams' moron is better than the other teams' genius." Honestly, I don't even blame them. As a Republican I'll admit that Chuck Schumer is absolutely a genius. That said, if he was an Ohio Senator rather than a New York Senator and his Republican opponent was a moron, I can't say that I wouldn't vote for the Republican moron rather than the Democratic genius because I'd assume that the Republican would vote the way I wanted more often. Pennsylvania Democrats made exactly that mental calculation when they voted for their moron Senator and Georgia Republicans made the same calculation when they voted for Herschel.