We desperately need reasonable term limits for congress

I’m more and more convinced there are no good arguments against reasonable term limits for congress.

I just read about the most recent member of congress having a somewhat age-related incident. This was Virginia Foxx. She has been in congress for 20 years and is 81 years old. Just recently we’ve had Joe Biden, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, and Diane Feinstein, all have age related incidents that affected their ability to perform.

My representative is Gerry Connolly who is 74 years old with cancer. I’ve voted for Connolly every time he ran. I don’t have a problem with Connolly, but I don’t know what I’m missing either because no democrat will challenge him in a primary. I don’t really get a chance to see what my options are until he chooses to stop running.

The arguments I’ve heard against term limits are things like, it takes power away from voters, it could diminish competency of congress, it could artificially cut short the tenure of beloved figures, and it wouldn’t really reduce corruption.

While some of these things may have some validity, I think they are all bad arguments when the current system has no term limits.

I could take the arguments against term limits one by one, but the glaring problem with all these arguments is I see no systemic benefit of allowing any person to be in the same position of power indefinitely.

When the arguments against term limits are brought up, I think they are made without specifying a specific duration. There is a difference in a term limit of 4 years versus 16 years. Meaning you could pick very generous conservative term limits if you are worried about competency or turnover.

But let’s be real. Over the last 40 years, how many elected officials would you say have been exceptional representatives of their constituents, or have some kind of irreplaceable skill?

When you build systems, you want those systems to facilitate behavior that aligns with your goals. I think one of the highest priorities of democracy is for elected officials to reflect the will of the people.

By repeatedly sending the same representatives we miss a good opportunity for voters to express their needs. We just saw this when democrats didn’t have a true primary. The primary process allows candidates to have a conversation with the voters. Without that process elected officials become detached from the people they represent.

By forcing some turnover it allows voters and representatives to reengage. This creates a natural interval for our governing system to realign itself.

I don’t think this just applies to congress. Imagine if we did the same with the judiciary. Do we really need lifetime appointments? I understand the goal of giving judges some insulation against political concerns but is a lifetime appointment necessary to accomplish this? We couldn’t do the same with say, a 20-year appointment.

Wouldn’t that make the supreme court appointments saner? That way you could predict when spots open, and they would open consistently so one president doesn’t have too much influence over the court by luck.

Maybe this isn’t the biggest problem in the world, but it seems like an obvious one that we should be able to fix. And who knows? Maybe this is causing more issues than we think. You really don’t know how these things can affect the system until you put the rules in place.