Beto Was Right - We need Term Limits For All Government Positions From The Supreme Court on Down

[crickets]

7. Thank you!

When people talk about term limits they forget that the same machete that lops out the representatives they don't like will also take those they do.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/01/18/five-reasons-to-oppose-congressional-term-limits/

Because term limits have never existed on the federal level, political scientists have studied states’ and foreign governments’ experiences with term limits to project what effects the measure would have on Congress. These studies regularly find that many of the corruptive, ‘swampy,’ influences advocates contend would be curtailed by instituting term limits are, in fact, exacerbated by their implementation.

Calls for term limits also fail to take into account all the other people in the governmental gears around elected officials who have no such limits. As mentioned - lobbyists.

https://www.vox.com/polyarchy/2016/10/18/13323842/trump-term-limits

"Legislative oversight is the venue of specialists. A term-limited legislature tends to be populated by generalists, who lack the accumulated knowledge to exercise oversight effectively, if they even recognize it as their responsibility."

Term limits also strengthen the power of lobbyists and interest groups for the same reason. In term-limited states, lawmakers and their staff have less time to build up expertise, since they are there for a limited time. But like the executive agencies of the state government, lobbyists and interest groups are also there year after year. They are the true repeat players building long-term relationships and the true keepers of the institutional knowledge. This gives them power.

It's a nice fantasy that what Washington needs is a bunch of good old-fashioned common sense — common sense that can only come from people who aren't "career politicians." But the machinery of government is now incredibly complex. And the more we cling to the fantasy of electing uncorrupted political neophytes as saviors, the more we empower the lobbyists and bureaucrats who can accumulate a lifetime of experience and knowledge.

And my final argument against term limits:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Pelosi

Nancy Patricia Pelosi (/pəˈloʊsi/; née D'Alesandro; born March 26, 1940) is an American Democratic Party politician serving as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives since January 2019. She is the first woman in U.S. history to hold this position. As such, and having first been elected to Congress in 1987, Pelosi is the highest-ranking female elected official in United States history.[2] As Speaker of the House, she is second in the presidential line of succession, immediately after the vice president.[3]

As of 2019, Pelosi is in her 17th term as a congresswoman.

And thank all the gods great and small for that.



eta apologies for the wall o' text - apparently I feel pretty strongly about this and kinda got carried away.