Term limits: The most useless debate
Any time I hear a politician talk about how they want to get elected, specifically so they can implement congressional term limits, I think of Bill McCollum.
McCollum was a lawyer from Orlando who spent 20 years in Congress claiming that no one should be there for more than 12.
After that came Congressman Ric Keller, who also claimed to support term limits. Keller even signed a pledge vowing not to stay in office for more than eight years. Yet eight years later, Keller ran for re-election anyway, saying he’d made a “rookie” mistake when he signed that pledge and that he’d subsequently discovered the value of tenure. Of course he did.
Rick Scott continued Florida’s supposed crusade for term limits a few years later, claiming that if he could just get into the U.S. Senate, he would impose term limits. (He did the first part. He did not do the second.)
Now, Gov. Ron DeSantis is the latest to join Team Term Limit. He recently took the state plane to South Carolina just before that state’s presidential primary — not for political purposes, he said, but so that the guy who ran for Congress, governor and president could voice his displeasure about politicians who constantly run for office.
Listen, I get the appeal of term limits. For years, I thought they were the bee’s knees. But allow me to submit that this neverending, never-advancing debate is, in fact, the most useless debate in American politics. For three reasons:
1) Most of the politicians who claim to support limits while running for office change their minds once they get there.
2) Even if they wanted to change the law, they can’t. Not without changing the U.S. Constitution.
3) We’ve seen proof term limits don’t automatically make things better. As Exhibit A, I offer you the Florida Legislature — which has term limits and yet is one of the cessiest cesspools in politics.
Honestly, if I had my druthers, I’d probably still prefer term limits. I believe in the adage that politicians are like diapers
and should be changed regularly.
But I’ve also come to the conclusion that this debate is largely bogus.
Most of the politicians who yap about it have no intention of following through. Some even admit they can’t. Keller was at least honest about that part, telling the Sentinel in 2000 that, while he was campaigning on the issue, “I certainly don’t have any prayer that it will pass.”
So why do so many politicians campaign on an issue they have no plans to implement or know darn well they can’t? Because it’s simplistic. And because most Americans like the idea (87%, according to a recent Pew poll).
So a politician who’s not very popular can glom onto an issue that’s incredibly popular and — voila! — Rick Scott wins a Senate seat by 0.2%.
Since getting into the Senate, Scott has indeed filed resolutions calling for term limits.
But none have gone anywhere. And everyone, including Scott, knew they never would — as evidenced by the fact that Mitch McConnell, who was first elected 1984, helped Scott in his first campaign … for term limits, mind you. Everyone involved knows it’s just theater.
The reason it’s all theater is because imposing term limits would require changing the U.S. Constitution. Three-fourths of American states would have to ratify the measure legislatively or by staging constitutional conventions. And that couldn’t even happen until America first staged a national Constitutional Convention or the proposal passed by two-thirds votes in both the U.S. House and Senate — where members have expressed no interest in doing so.
When Scott ran for office, he appeared in a campaign ad, saying: “They say term limits can’t be done.” By “they,” he essentially meant the nation’s Founding Fathers.
They’re the ones who contemplated including term limits in the Constitution, but decided against them, deciding that voters should make that call.
Again, I still understand the appeal. Politicians often get into office, enjoy the perks, grow more detached from their constituents each term and then use the power of incumbency to remain in office. It’s a wicked cycle.
On the flip side, when lawmakers are forced out every eight or 12 years, they don’t develop much institutional knowledge, and lobbyists often end up leading them around by the nose.
That’s what we have in Tallahassee where we have term limits, and lobbyists not only call the shots, they literally write the bills. (See: “Documents show FPL wrote legislation to slow rooftop solar” and “Lobbyist wrote bill to protect Visit Orlando but sought to hide his role.”)
The point: Both systems have flaws. Both have merit. But regardless of where you come down, the system isn’t changing. The politicians who promise you otherwise know that. They just hope you’re too dumb to know it as well.
Really, it’s up to voters. It always is.
And every once in a while, the voters remind the politicians of that — which brings us back to Ric Keller.
After eight years in Congress, when Keller decided to renege on that term-limit pledge he’d signed when originally seeking votes, voters decided to help him honor that pledge anyway — by kicking him out of office.