Earlier I posted an article about how term limits probably won’t eliminate career politicians, stop corruption or promote new ideas. But term limits have their advantages. Let’s look at those.
Big Advantage: Competition
Incumbents have an overwhelming advantage in elections. Despite low approval ratings of Congress as a whole, incumbents are re-elected about 90% of the time. They have an already-built campaign organization, established funding, and name recognition.
Term limits will certainly bring more competition to elections. When a member of Congress resigns, there’s suddenly room for real competition in the primary, where most elections are decided. This is because one party often has a clear majority in a district. In many states, this is due to gerrymandering. This leads to more and more uncontested races in the main election.
And primaries are poorly attended. Often it’s mainly the party faithful who vote in a primary, and primaries tend to re-nominate for the incumbent at a rate of about 98%.
Why competition is important
Competition is vital. This article, which is against term limits, says that: “Often, the only thing that keeps members in line is the threat of losing their next primary.” They are saying that if every 10 years, 20% of representatives can’t run for office again, this is a large number of officials with no accountability.
Given the advantages that incumbents have and the difficulties challengers face, I’d say this threat of losing their seat is already weak. In general, incumbents do not need to be very accountable to voters. Before elections, much of what they do is invisible. In elections, challengers much wage huge campaigns to become known and overcome the incumbent’s advantages.
And in our current system, most voters don’t pay close attention to candidates’ records. While this is something PeopleCount will help rectify, it currently hides what’s really happening in Washington. Even if a challengers works very hard these days, they’re going to have a difficult time educating voters about what the member of Congress should have done differently.
What’s ideal?
Term limits could help ensure there’s turnover. But they’re not ideal.
Ideal would be:
- Increasing accountability, such as with PeopleCount
- Increasing communication between voters and politicians
- Increasing the importance of issues instead of parties
- Making campaigns less dependent on funding
The advantages and disadvantages of term limits
The advantages of term limits include increasing competition and turnover. The huge advantages of incumbents will be short-circuited.
The disadvantages of term limits include making good, proven, experienced politicians unable to continue leading. Politicians could still work for politician offices and for parties and advocacy groups, but we’d have fewer members of Congress with expertise in legislating. And term limits thwart the will of the people, in ways. In the next article, we’ll look at some possible compromises.