Category: term limits

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term limits

Why the Brutality?

A former Uganda Supreme Court justice has said that were the country’s top banana, President Yoweri Museveni, to meet his own self of a quarter century ago, “they would shoot each other.”

Will Ross, reporting for the BBC News, provides a fascinating account of what’s gone wrong in the country after the ousting of tyrant and cannibal Idi Amin. The upshot? Not so good.

Freedom of assembly and the right to petition — protest — one’s government are a thing of the past in Uganda. Protestors got around this by holding “walk-​to-​work” protests … and then found themselves arrested. For walking.

Brutal government is back in style. A law society official laments that his people are “mourning the death of law in Uganda.”

And Museveni himself has become brutal. As Ross tries to explain, he’s changed over time.

Power has done something to him.

But this is not shocking. Indeed, it was predicted. By Museveni himself. “The problem of Africa in general and Uganda in particular,” he wrote in 1986, “is not the people but leaders who want to overstay in power.”

And yet here he remains, still in power. Unwilling to give it up.

From this follows many of the country’s other problems, the suppression, the police state tactics, even the declining economic outlook. In America, we used to call the necessary principle “rotation in office.” Now we speak of “term limits.”

Fledgling democracies need term limits as much or more than we do. The concept is universal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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term limits

Term Limits for Cuba?

You can’t cheer some victories — they just don’t seem real.

I mean, what can you make of the “victory” for term limits represented by Raul Castro’s endorsement of the reform during an endless speech at his country’s Sixth Communist Party Congress? 

Castro told fellow commies that political officials, including El Presidente, should be limited to two consecutive five-​year terms. Seems that with the Castro brothers about to shuffle off this mortal coil, decades of dictatorship have shrunk the pool of well-​tested vicious ranters experienced maligning capitalist running dogs and running the country into the ground.

The dear leader’s speech touted a laundry list of proposed changes to Cuba’s socialist system, including legalizing the sale of cars and homes, a possibility the party has been “studying.” Some of these reforms might take effect and make life a little easier for Cubans.

Perhaps Raul Castro, 79, reflecting on his ailing fratello’s disastrous half-​century dictatorship (1959 to 2008, more or less), has decided Cuba’s socialism and autocracy don’t really work after all.

It’s happened in other moribund societies.

But even if presidential term limits should (against all odds) be enacted before Raul kicks the bucket, they won’t mean much if his successor decides they don’t mean much. And like other critics of the regime, I doubt that Cuba will be the country to buck the trend of governments “restricted” by term limits that are not worth the tissue-​paper constitutions they’re written on.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Voters Need Not Apply

Colorado politicians have hatched a scheme, Senate Concurrent Amendment 1, that may solve the awful problem of those pesky Colorado voters passing reforms like term limits and the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, the state’s quite effective spending cap.

SCR‑1 solves the alleged problem of too many constitutional amendments by — you guessed it — enacting yet another constitutional amendment. As the Senate yesterday passed SCR‑1, sending it to the House, Democratic Senator Linda Newell of Denver complained, “I am embarrassed to see how many changes are in our constitution.”

She should be. While most of the 16 amendments enacted in the last decade were proposed by legislators (ten, or 62.5 percent), the measure the snooty senator supports is designed to disrupt only the citizen initiative process. 

SCR‑1 prevents a majority of Colorado voters from passing amendments by requiring a 60 percent supermajority — that is, allowing a 40 percent minority to block any reform. This works great for big labor and big business interests who can spend big bucks running nasty 30-​second TV ads to create enough doubt to hold an initiative one vote under 60 percent.

Worse yet, if SCR‑1 passes, legislators would still be able to put term limits or the state’s spending limit on the ballot for repeal by a simple majority. An interesting principle: new reform requires a supermajority, but lower percentages may gut term limits or dump the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people term limits

Term Limits, Good

During the last few weeks of Egyptian unrest, a phrase got bandied about with an unusual degree of assumed support: Term limits. We heard of their importance from The Christian Science Monitor,  The New York Times, and other news sources, some of which would normally pooh-​pooh any push to establish, say, legislative term limits in America.

The writers and editors in question should find this odd. Why is it good for an executive in America to be term limited (as our Commander-​in-​Chief is), and even essential (as was often said) for commanders elsewhere, while it’s verboten for U.S. legislators?

Term limits’ rationale is clear. Journalists who wrote about the lack of term limits for Mubarak got the idea. They’re familiar with Lord Acton’s dictum: Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Term limits for executives prevent tyrannies from forming — or, if formed, from continuing till the rigors of mortis set in.

What do term limits for legislators prevent? 

Not full-​blown tyranny, exactly, but corruption. In a representative democracy, corruption can be subtle. 

Term limits are just unsubtle enough to check some of that.

Take John Dingell, the politician to serve longest exclusively in the House. He took over his district from his father, who had served there 22 years — a 78-​year dynasty!

Aristotle argued men should “rule and be ruled in turn.” Term limitation: a democratic principle to ward off both wannabe dictators and legislative dynasties.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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term limits

Starting Somewhere With Term Limits

To be effective in reversing the big-​government tide, the new GOP majority in the House must exercise the discipline to shake off bad old habits. Where to start? Term limits. 

And the term limits can start with leadership.

In 1994, the GOP imposed term limits on committee chairmen. Although there was a little wavering around the edges of that reform, the party did retain it until the Democrats gained the majority in 2008 and promptly chucked the idea of committee chair term limits.

Having regained the majority, some Republicans are mumbling about “granting exceptions” to committee chair limits for this guy and that guy and the other guy. But rampant exceptions to sensible reforms would show that nothing much is changing in how Congress does business. And a lot’s got to change.

Other Republicans, though, are talking about term limits not only for committee chairmen but for all leadership positions. The new Majority Leader-​to-​be, Eric Cantor, tells The Hill he’d support “a six-​year term limit for each position.”

Hear, hear. Bravo!

But let’s shout out loudest for term limits on all members of Congress. Senator Tom Coburn and others have sponsored a constitutional amendment to impose a maximum of two six-​year terms in the Senate, three two-​year terms in the House. A hard sell to the entrenched incumbent? Sure. Fifteen years ago, a similar effort failed. But like most good failure, it can be built upon. 

Let’s start at the top.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies political challengers term limits

Congressional Stagnation at an End?

With this last election, 87 percent of House incumbents who chose to run for re-​election got re-elected.

That’s low by modern standards. In fact, it’s the lowest since 1970, which garnered 85 percent rates for incumbents.

But it’s high by older standards. Eric O’Keefe, of the Sam Adams Alliance, says that the re-​election rate may be low today but remains higher “than every election of the 19th century.”

Something changed. Individual career politicians gained the upper hand. 

On the brighter side, it’s worth noting that if you include “voluntary retirement” in current figures, the turnover rate was much higher. Forty-​five open House seats saw 16 flips of party affiliation, all but one going from Democrat to Republican. This leads Doug Mataconis to figure the retention rate at 64 percent. (Still, in the 19th century, that same rate averaged to under 60 percent.)

Of course, many of our recent “voluntary retirees” may have seen the writing on the wall, preferring to bow out with more dignity than an electoral trouncing would allow.

Credit this to an exceptional frisson amongst the voting public, born of anger and disgust at the political class’s habitual over-​spending and general foolishness. 

It remains to be seen whether this acuity of citizen focus can alone spur continued turnover and real change. It seems unlikely, which is why I’ve long supported term limits.

But, whatever the source, real change is necessary. And the current turnover, welcome.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.