Term Limits

7 Pages 1797 Words

Citizen Legislation
It's a problem that most politicians have. It's the kind of problem that power exploits to destroy what's good in people. For the first 125 years of American history under its new Constitution, citizen representatives in Congress and in the White House governed us. Tradition, not legal requirements, maintained this condition.
Presidents followed the example of George Washington, who served two terms as president and then went home, not because he was forced to, but because he believed in the rotation in office. That meant elected leaders would not always remain in office, but would in turn be the governed, rather than the rulers. In those first 125 years, about 35 percent of the members of the House retired before every election. These people were voluntarily-resigning, members who went home because they believed that was good for them and good for the nation.
In the first century, congressmen had not yet learned the art of stuffing their pockets with hundred-thousand-dollar salaries, million-dollar pensions, large staffs, and all the other privileges that power has. Remaining in Congress for decades was not as attractive then as now. In the first century, average turnover in the House for the entire first century of our government was 43 percent in every election, almost all of this massive turnover was due to "voluntary quits".
To put that statistic in perspective, the highest turnover in any election in the second century was in 1932 during the Great Depression. The landslide that brought FDR into office also caused a turnover in the House of 37.7 percent, still substantially less than the average for all of the prior century. Members who simply decided to go home, rather than run again, used to account for more than two-thirds of the turnover in every election.
Eleven years after the first successful initiative, term limits have affected more than 700 legislative seats in 11 states. At a time of anticipat...