ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, November 4, 1996 TAG: 9611040110
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD E. MOONEY
THE RELENTLESS advocates of congressional term limits are back on the ballot in 13 states on Tuesday, this time with a proposal that amounts to a public hanging for any candidate who refuses to support their mindless scheme for government by novices.
These 13 states, mostly Western, have already voted limits on their senators and representatives and, in most cases, on state officials as well.
But in 1995 the Supreme Court ruled the congressional limits invalid, declaring that states cannot add to the three qualifications for members of Congress engraved in the Constitution - age, citizenship and residence - and that any change would require a constitutional amendment.
So the advocates then pressed their cause on Congress itself.
The Republicans' ``Contract With America'' included term limits, and the House approved an amendment last year that would have limited senators to two terms and representatives to three, but proponents failed to muster the necessary two-thirds majority. The Senate did not vote.
Comes now the ``Scarlet Letter'' attack. Like Nathaniel Hawthorne's Hester Prynne, who was forced to wear a scarlet ``A'' for adultery, candidates for Congress would be tagged on future ballots as supporters or opponents of term limits.
The proposals on this year's ballots instruct each state's congressional delegation to support limits.
In future elections, ballots would indicate if incumbents had ``violated'' or ``disregarded'' the instructions or, in the case of challengers, whether they refused to pledge support.
This approach has been used once before, and it worked. The cause was the popular election of senators, finally adopted by the 17th Amendment in 1913.
Until then, they were elected by state legislatures, commonly after nonbinding popular primaries singled out the strongest candidates.
Advocates of direct popular election employed the same tactic then that term-limits advocates are using now. In the matter of electing senators, the cause was just. In the case of term limits, it is not.
The term-limits cause is wildly popular, no doubt about it.
In just the past half-dozen years, overwhelming majorities of voters have approved them for members of Congress in 23 states, for state legislators in 20 of those states and for local officials in some 3,000 cities, towns and counties.
Clearly, term limits address the public's frustration with self-perpetuating officeholders.
Supporters are well-intentioned, but they are misguided. Alexander Hamilton's commentary on limiting presidential terms, in one of the Federalist Papers, is equally apt for Congress:
``Nothing appears more plausible at first sight, nor more ill founded on close inspection, than a scheme of continuing [the president] in office for a certain time and then excluding him from it for ever after.''
The Articles of Confederation had limited members' terms in the Continental Congress, but the Founding Fathers rejected the idea. Arbitrary limits have the same flaws today as they had 200-plus years ago.
Term limits would have shortened the congressional careers of Daniel Webster, Robert LaFollette Jr., Robert Taft, Margaret Chase Smith and Sam Rayburn, among others. Those giants built their strength on years of experience.
Term limits are a promise that there will be no more giants. They deny America the benefits of experience. Effective members would be thrown out along with the rascals.
Term limits would unbalance the relative powers of the executive and legislative branches, for there are no time limits on employment in the permanent bureaucracy.
The breadth and depth of expertise in the executive branch needs to be balanced by expertise in the House and Senate. That balance cannot be developed if members of Congress are heaved out after two or three terms.
Term limits deflate effort. Hamilton philosophized that ``the desire of reward is one of the strongest incentives of human conduct.''
Men and women elected to limited years in office would have limited incentive to work for the continued approval of their constituents.
Most profoundly of all, term limits deprive Americans of their fundamental right to elect the candidates they want.
This key flaw may seem abstract, but it bears out Hamilton's point that the scheme dissolves under ``close inspection.''
If there were term limits, and the most popular candidate had already served as long as the limits allowed, it would not matter that he or she would be a shoo-in for re-election. That person's name would be barred from the ballot, and the voters' precious freedom to choose would be for naught.
The 13 states voting on ``scarlet letter'' proposals are: Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North and South Dakota, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.
The proponents aim to force support by their 26 senators and 43 representatives. That is nowhere near the two-thirds majorities needed to send an amendment out for ratification by the states, but it would be a menacing foot in the door.
If only there were an equally earnest effort for meaningful campaign-finance reform, whether that means public financing or leakproof caps on raising and spending private money. That is one sure way to give challengers a better chance against incumbents.
President Clinton says he wants reform. Bob Dole, too. The president and House Speaker Newt Gingrich agreed to push it. Their failure to do so is the kind of inaction that breeds support for term limits.
Richard E. Mooney is a free-lance journalist based in New York.
- Knight-Ridder/Tribune
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