Term Limits For Congress And State Legislatures - Its Time Has Come

Calvin Coolidge said the man should not become the office. Today, we have many career politicians who, if they were not corrupt when they entered office, became corrupt during their term of office. I am afraid that this corruption has become so pervasive that people are becoming desensitized to it. It seems that only the most egregious crimes committed by politicians get thoroughly investigated, like Governor Blogojevich, of Illinois. Even the Press seems to relent on pursuing politicians who violated ethical standards before a satisfactory explanation is forthcoming. A case in point is Senator Dodd of Connecticut, who is the chairman of the banking committee. Apparently, he received a very favorable interest rate on a mortgage from Country Wide, now a subsidiary of Bank of America. The Wall Street Journal ran a number of editorials about this. However, according to the Journal, the good Senator still has not provided a satisfactory explanation despite his claim that the public relations company he hired to provide the details to a limited number of the press has exonerated him of any wrong doing.

Another troubling example of an important elected official that has violated the public trust is Representative Charlie Rangel, the Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. He failed to report income on his tax returns from property he owned, and this property was apparently financed with an interest free loan from a campaign backer who is also a politically active lawyer. In addition, he availed himself of rent controlled apartments for business purposes. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, who ran on a platform to clean up corruption in the previously Republican controlled House, was conspicuously silent about representative Rangel’s transgressions. The press seems to have given up on this story as well.

I live in New Jersey, a state that was only temporarily moved from the top spot in corruption by Chicago. The list of crimes committed by public officials is so numerous in New Jersey that it is sometimes referred to as the Soprano State, named after the book that exposed this rampant corruption. Recently, the Mayor of Hoboken, Peter Cammarano, after only 24 days in office was charged with taking bribes. That was the topper. It speaks to the unmitigated nerve of many of these politicians. This mayor’s seat was not even warm and he got caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

It was not the intent of our founding fathers to make a career out of serving the public good. We are only looking for trouble when politicians stay in office for 20 or 30 years. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to get incumbents out of office for a number of reasons. It seems that the public suffers from what I call the John Gotti syndrome. People in his neighborhood new he was a crime figure but liked him anyway since he was reputed to be responsible for keeping crime down in his community. This comparison applies to our politicians. If the majority of constituents believe that their elected officials support their pet causes and have the power to get things done, there is the tendency to look the other way when the law is stretched or broken unless there is a gross violation. Furthermore, it takes great popularity and/or money to unseat an incumbent who has been in office a long time. In addition, there seems to be a sense of powerlessness, and lack of initiative to get better informed by many in the electorate. These have to be some of the explanations for the Clinton’s or the Kennedy’s political success.
We need to ask ourselves are we getting the best people to run for office and is our current system promoting corruption and fraud? Our country is relatively young from a historical perspective. History teaches us that if a society does not encourage the best people to run for office, its success and long-term survival is at stake. At the very least, we know that term limits will eventually remove corrupt politicians hopefully before they will do too much damage. Moreover, term limits will prevent creating career politicians who are out of touch with what working people go through every day. Also, I always thought that those teachers who had a breadth of experience in the outside world made the best instructors in graduate school. Maybe term limits will encourage the right people to serve in government who will promote the public good and not just build their wealth and power. If we believe that term limits is important for the Presidency, there is no reason to believe it would not be beneficial for Congress and our state legislatures.