We witnessed the epitome of uber-experienced Washington, last week, when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑Ky.) froze mid-sentence during a press briefing, unable to utter a sound or make any movement for a seemingly interminable 19 seconds.
The Republican leader, 81 years of age, the last 38 spent in the United States Senate, was eventually rescued by fellow Republican senators, led away from the microphones.
McConnell has plenty of company in Washington. There’s our doddering octogenarian president. And in Congress, incumbency leads to longevity, which leads to old age. The Senate, Newsmax notes, now “has the highest median age in U.S. history at 65.”
Americans were treated to another gerontocratic spectacle with 90-year-old Sen. Diane Feinstein (D‑Calif.), appearing confused at a committee hearing, and being told to vote “aye.”
And sheepishly complying.
I started to write, “If this is what experience leads
And grist for a million memes. “Family Torn Between Placing Grandpa In Hospice,” runs a Babylon Bee headline, “And Having Him Run For Senate.”
Funny, sure. But this problem isn’t. Getting old isn’t always pretty. And even career politicians such as McConnell and Feinstein deserve better.
So do ‘We, the People’!
Term limits would solve the problem and be better than age limits. Both are popular — 75 percent favor age limits, while over 80 percent want term limits. But with Congress having dodged the congressional term limits enacted in 24 states back in the 1990s, citizens in North Dakota, with help from U.S. Term Limits, have launched a ballot initiative for 2024 to place an age limit of 80 on their federal representatives.
Three decades ago, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly struck down state-imposed term limits, 5 – 4. Today, what will the High Court determine on age limits?
Inquiring minds want to know. And I really love the movement’s relentless agitation!
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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8 replies on “Nineteen Seconds and Counting”
Given Fetterman who was elected for his first term at 53 years old with a brain that was never good and had become a ruin, and given other people who remain mentally acute into their nineties, I don’t see age limits as a good idea nor term limits as a full solution to the problem of mentally incapacitated people being elected to office.
But the most recent electoral victories od McConnell, of Feinstein, and of Pelosi were plainly inertial. And, even setting aside the problem of senescence, the case for term limits is more than sufficient.
Yep, it was a gargantuan effort. The descent in USTL v Thornton, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, made him a favorite of mine, forever.
Too bad those contemptible creeps who now inhabit the Arkansas legislature have butchered it in the years that followed. Now it’s just a whimpering little puppy of its former self.
Skip Cook
The inherent problem with term limits is that there is no accountability in the last term. Our system was designed to work with accountability in mind. Growth (from representation of under 100,000 people to over 800,000 now) and political machinations (the 17th Amendment) have solidified removal of accountability to anyone except the party. Term limits would simply make accountability only apply to a first of two terms, tossing aside the considerable education, wisdom, and experience of the founders, and giving us a half effective system. Better than what we have now but a solidly inadequate compromise.
A far better solution would be twofold. First, negating the 17th Amendment, instead adding some checks and balances to allow adequate function if the state legislatures don’t perform adequately, rather than removing their input entirely. Taking the state legislature out of the loop puts senators in the same morass as the representatives, where Madison’s “confusion of the multitudes” disallows real representation.
Secondly, we need to get back to have representatives really represent, limiting the number of people they to whom they are accountable to under 100,000, as originally envisioned. Too many constituents and the human scale of the republic no longer works. Like making a pencil the size of a telephone pole. May have all the same parts but it’s usually for one citizen to use. In this age of electronics, it is absurd to say that we have to limit the number of representatives or that they need to be based and present in DC. And if it takes several thousand to represent all the constituents, it would still be far cheaper than the cartel that we currently have that is only accounting to their party.
I don’t think that the incentive problem that you identify should be called one of “accountability”. And I note that, when George Mason proposed term limits during the Convention, that issue of incentives was not raised. (Rather, a lack of qualified people was the counterargument.) None-the-less, the incentive problem to which you point is real, as illustrated by how much Ronald Reagan coasted in his second term.
But one can overstate the significance of the problem. Under normal circumstances, an elected official will someday think This next term will be my last. If voters know that he or she would be insufficiently incentivized in such a term, then they should anticipated which term is likely to be the last, and withhold their votes. Of course, the candidate should accordingly adjust his or calculations as to which term will be his or her last. Pushed too far, the argument would have us reject all candidates.
I believe that the most important effect of term-limits on incentives are that, if a person cannot make a life-time career as an office-holder, then he or she is less beholden to political machines and cartels, has less to sell, and is more inclined to develop proficiencies beyond those of office-seeking.
While I agree 100% with both limits (term and age), the Supreme Court will deny any such limits set by a state, just as they struct down a state law on term limits on Congress. The reason was the no state law can supersede the constitution and the constitution has no such limits. Similarly the Court struct down a state law requiring congressmen to live in their district when the constitution only requires that he live in the state. Sad, but true. Since Congress will never agree to these limits on themselves, the only hope is a constitutional amendment via a convention (small odds of that).
The flaw in the prior logic of the Supreme Court can be seen if we imagine the Court telling the voters that, since the Constitution does not provide for them to reject candidates of the Shoot-and-Loot Party, they must vote for those candidates. It would only be if the Constitution demanded that the voters must not reject those candidates that they would not have such power.
Term limits imposed by the voters of a state upon their Representatives and Senators are powers remaining to those peoples or their states. Granted that it might be nice if they exercised that power simply by rejecting candidates at the polls; the people and the states retain the power to reject those candidates by law.
“Much of the social history of the western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.”_Thomas Sowell
But now we are discussing replacing what does not, and sounding good should not count against a proposal.