Reflections on Term Limits

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The following is from Thomas Sowell. Barbarians inside the Gates. pp. 96 - 98

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Reflections on Term Limits

THE REFLECTING POOL between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial may be the only thing in Washington that is reflecting. Preoccupation with the never-ending task of political fund-raising, fighting daily brushfires, and trying to put the right spin on the crisis du jour leaves very little time for the nation's political leaders to step back and contemplate deeper and enduring questions amid the swirl of events and rhetoric.

Reflection is not a luxury but a prime necessity. Anyone who has ever done anything as mundane as looking for a house knows how much time and thought goes into weighing one place against another and both against the bank account, not to mention the conflicting demands of getting to work, getting the children in a good school and many other considerations.

Imagine if in one year you had to decide—and vote on—complex environmental issues, foreign policy around the world, racial issues at home, military defense, judicial appointments, and regulating public utilities, pharmaceutical drugs, the stock market and the safety of mines, airports, food and vaccines. Even if we arbitrarily assume that none of these things is any more complicated than buying a house, how many people could handle all the problems of buying a house ten times in one year?

Worse yet, these national and international issues are not the sole—or even the main—business of those in Congress or the White House. Their main business is getting re-elected. That is also the main business of those who work for them, even though theoretically these staffers and appointees work for the country and certainly are paid by the taxpayers.

One of the strongest cases for term limits is that a one-term rule would free up a major block of time, and eliminate a major conflict-of-interest, among elected officials and their staffs, by eliminating their overwhelming preoccupation with getting re-elected. Those advocates of term limits who wish merely to restrict the number of terms forfeit much of this advantage for, if three terms are allowed for a Congressman, then in two-thirds of those terms the Congressman and his staff will still be preoccupied with re-election.

If the fear is that two years is too short a time for a member of the House of Representatives to get the lay of the land and become an effective legislator, then instead of allowing three two-year terms, one six-year term could be established. The point is to get people focussed on national concerns, not their own re-election.

Those who fear that we would lose the great "expertise" that members of Congress develop after years of dealing with certain issues fail to see that much of that expertise is in the arts of packaging, log-rolling, creative accounting and other forms of deception. Those who dominate the national political scene—and often the local scene, as well—are experts only in the law and in political machinations.

Genuine experts in particular fields seldom have either the incentive or the political talents to get elected to public office. A leading surgeon, engineer, corporate executive, scientist or financial consultant earns far more than the salary of any public official in Washington. What incentive is there for someone like this to sacrifice his family's present wellbeing and future security, unless he is so driven by the desire for power that any sacrifice seems worth it?

Anyone with such a craving for power is the last person to trust with power.

One of the greatest economy moves we could make would be to pay every member of Congress a million dollars a year, but with no perks and no pension. Paying this salary to each member of Congress for the entire 21st century would cost less than running the Department of Agriculture for one year.

This would pay for itself many times over because many government agencies and programs could be eliminated by a Congress not concerned with raising campaign money from special interests that benefit from bureaucracies ostensibly set up to serve the public.

With such a salary, people who are at the top of many fields could afford to spend one term in Washington performing a civic duty without sacrificing their families—and without any prospect that this could be a career from which they could retire with a pension.

The absence of perks would emphasize that they were not little tin gods but simply citizens temporarily serving in government. They could also bring some real expertise to Washington, expertise in something besides politics.

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I do have some doubts about this idea. I am not sure that a top expert in the world of physics or molecular biology would make a better congressman than an able, intelligent person with only a high school or perhaps college education and good common sense. Many of our congressmen have backgrounds in law. Perhaps law is the best background for a congressman.

The idea of single terms does sound attractive.

11 June 2024