Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 9, 1990 TAG: 9003122969
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Paxton Davis
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
He may have thought I was jesting, and in any case he won handily in November. The incumbent had been in office too long for my taste and had grown barnacles because of it, and though I rarely vote for Republicans I had no problem supporting my friend.
Moreover - and my point - it was no idle jest. Part of my vote was friendship, to be sure, but the other part was a deepening belief that too many elected officials at all levels are staying in office far longer than good sense or their usefulness as public servants would dictate.
All of this is my way of saying that the new movement - or more correctly the revived old movement - to limit the number of terms a man or woman may serve in the United States Senate or House of Representatives is going to have my firm support.
The movement bears the official name Americans to Limit Congressional Terms, is non-partisan despite a heavily Republican coloration, and seeks passage of a constitutional amendment that would limit service in both houses of Congress to a total of 12 years - six consecutive terms for a congressman, two for a senator.
It is certainly true that the idea is not new. Complaints about both the damage done by longevity and the unfair advantages enjoyed by incumbents have been raised for more than a century, and the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who broke with the custom of limiting White House terms to two, provoked passage after his death of a constitutional amendment holding future presidents legally to the traditional two terms.
Some of that was fueled by Republican frustration at their inability to regain the White House, and some of today's demands for limiting congressional tenure may be fueled by similar Republican frustration at breaking the Democratic Party's long grip on the House of Representatives.
A good idea is good whatever the motives of those who support it, however, and this is an instance in point. The Democrats do have a grip on the House. Incumbency is such an electoral advantage that few challengers are able to break it - the 1988 election returned 98 percent of incumbents who sought re-election. Long tenure has worked, on the whole, to the stultification of legislative progress and to the encouragement of legislative timidity.
Sen. Gordon Humphrey, R-N.H., a conservative who believes in "citizen-legislators" and is retiring next January after 12 years, argues that "no single reform would do more good than to limit the terms." Other supporters of limitation, echoing him, believe that the United States has spawned, perhaps unwittingly, "career legislators" who become bound to Washington thinking rather than to the thinking of their constituencies.
Public sentiment, moreover, is beginning to lean toward limitation. A Gallup Organization poll revealed earlier this year that now 70 percent of Americans want to impose some kind of cap on congressional tenure.
Opponents argue, on the other hand, that such limitations would cost Congress some of its most seasoned, most valuable members: men like Sen. Sam Nunn, House Speaker Tom Foley, Sen. Robert Dole, for example, all of whom have been in office longer than the proposed limitation would permit.
The value of such men is hard to dispute, but against that value stands the value of fresh faces, new attitudes, less fealty to the binding mores of the Beltway, perhaps far less of the political cowardice shown by so many legislators who fear to cast difficult votes for fear of offending powerful constituencies and power blocs and thus of losing a subsequent election. In effect, every legislator would become, to some degree, a lame duck on initial election.
Then it would be time to turn the same heat on state legislators, who are, if that is imaginable, even sorrier than the big boys in Washington.
by CNB