Seven Hundred Terms in a Row?

Ya gotta love Lou Lang. Any public servant who can manage to exude vast indifference to the public’s disgust with endless political corruption has something going for him. 

As a state representative in Illinois, he has had a front-​row seat to the constant corruption sordidly and melodramatically symbolized by former Governor Rod Blagojevich’s taped attempt to sell Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat.

Like the disgraced governor, Lang favors brazen cynicism in the face of criticism.

After Blago got the boot, the new governor, Pat Quinn, set up an Illinois Reform Commission to study the corruption problem. The reform proposals ranged from the dubious to the … modest.

For example, the commission proposed term limits to combat political monopoly. But it proposed term limits not for all lawmakers, only for legislative leaders. And the cap? A rather generous 14 years. 

Illinois voters won’t get even that, let alone a better deal, until they have the right of citizen initiative and can impose term limits themselves.

Yet even a 14-​year maximum is way too stringent for the likes of Mr. Lang. After the commission issued its report, Lang rushed to assure the beleaguered populace of Illinois that if House members “want to elect Mike Madigan for 700 terms in a row, that’s our business.” Yeah! Get lost, citizens! Mind your own business!

Gotta love him.

Okay, maybe not.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.