ThisIsCommonSense.org

America is a place where if you work hard enough anything you can dream can happen. Well, thanks in part to term limits.

Take the story of Phillip Brutus. Many years ago this Haitian immigrant was a part-​time janitor at a law firm. While emptying the trash one day, he overheard the senior partner quizzing junior lawyers on Latin legal terms. When the junior lawyers were stumped, Brutus spoke up with the correct answer. In that room full of raised eyebrows and jaws dropped wide open, he decided to become a lawyer.

After years of poverty and sacrifice, Brutus earned his law degree and opened up a practice. Then he dreamed of serving his community in the state legislature. In Florida, incumbency effectively blocked new people. Most incumbent legislators didn’t face any competition at all.

Phillip’s challenge of a powerful incumbent went the way of virtually all such challenges: he lost. Then Florida’s term limits law took effect and all that changed. Suddenly there were more candidates running then you could shake a stick at. Brutus sought an open seat where there was no entrenched incumbent and he won becoming the first Haitian-​American elected to Florida’s Legislature.

When incumbents can no longer monopolize our politics, voters get real choices and anything can happen. Our economy has long been open to those who work hardest and best serve their customers. Shouldn’t our political process work this way, too? With term limits it does.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Whose side are you on? That seems to have been mighty important in all the wrangling over who’ll be the next president. It’s taking quite a while to figure out who that will be, but it’s the work of a moment to see there are serious problems in our politics. The sense of legitimacy that serves to unite Americans of differing views just isn’t there.

A big part of the reason is that partisanship is playing a large and corrosive role from administrative officials to court justices. How many Republicans feel comfortable about the election boards in overwhelmingly Democratic Florida counties making decisions about the intent of voters ala dimpled or pregnant chads? And who can blame Democrats for suspecting that the Republican Secretary of State might perceive her discretion through a partisan lens?

For years Americans have supported term limits feeling that over time career politicians tend to put their political party and their personal careers ahead of their public duties. Madison, chief architect of the Constitution, warned against factions, his term for groups that pursue their special interests at the expense of the common interest.

Rep. Steve Largent of Oklahoma is an NFL Hall-​of-​Famer who has term-​limited himself in Congress. He says, “… I wasn’t elected to represent just the Republican or Democratic teams … the team that we’re all on is the American team.” Let’s end the partisan stranglehold on our government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Attention, America. Attention. The long battle is almost over. The Department of Agriculture has proposed to grant American farmers the all-​important right to create smaller holes in Swiss cheese. They’ve bowed to pressure from groups like the Wisconsin Cheese Makers, which argued that the eye-​size requirements for Swiss cheese are “out of step with the demands of the consumer and the marketer.”

Fans of Swiss cheese are wild with joy. Mary Smith, veteran cheese-​eater of Kalamazoo, Michigan says, “I’m tired of all those huge holes. Why the regulators have taken so long to permit smaller Swiss-​cheese holes is beyond me. Of course, I don’t want the holes to be too small. Well … I guess they know what they’re doing.” Hey, thank you so much, Mary, for your input. That was very valuable. And thank goodness our leaders don’t leave the fate of devoted eaters of cheese to the brutal free market.

Without the regulators in Washington, who knows what size the holes in Swiss cheese would be? Some might be too large for the cheese altogether. And some might be so small you could hardly see them! It’s all too scary to contemplate. One thing’s certain: It must take years of experience for our bureaucrats and career politicians to master the intricacies of cheese regulation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Ah, those Founding Fathers! Ya gotta love ’em. They were brave men and wise, and their wisdom stands the test of time.

Consider, for example, the Federalist Papers, editorials written early in our history to explain the new American constitution to the public. Consider in particular the famous Federalist Paper Number Ten, about the problem of faction. What James Madison called a faction is what we today call a “special interest.” But let me quote Madison: “By a faction,” says Madison, “I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

You can see the beauty of this definition. Madison’s concept excludes any politically active groups that are fighting for the interests or rights of all of us. But it covers all groups, whether “actuated by passion or interest,” who just want to grab something for themselves at the expense of everyone else, for instance a subsidy or a price support or a regulation against a competitor. Madison’s definition also includes folks you wouldn’t think at first to regard as a special interest: like power-​grabbing career politicians, whose factional propensities we would do well to recognize and combat. As usual, good work James.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

What would you expect politicians who claim to be reformers to say about a lobbyist making a $25,000 loan to a politician who then signs on to legislation promoted by the lobbyist? Well, apparently it depends a lot on whether the politician in question is a member of your party or the other party. Welcome to Washington.

The case involves six-​term incumbent Congressman Jim Moran and now-​defeated congressional candidate Terry Lierman, a drug company lobbyist. Both are Democrats and thus while Republicans are calling for investigations and resignations; Democrats are saying it’s all no big deal. That two men, one in Congress and the other seeking the office, could really be so clueless as to not notice that this type of transaction walks and quacks like a bribe is a sad commentary on the political talent we get to choose from.

Now Republicans are right to investigate this. But why have they given their own Republican Rep. Bud Schuster a free pass? Schuster’s dealings with a lobbyist have violated House rules but resulted in nothing more than a weak slap on the wrist. We can’t know what motivated the very inappropriate financial deal between Moran and Lierman, who are certainly innocent until proven guilty. But as for the double standard of career politicians who believe in one set of laws for you and another for them and their buddies … well, let’s just say: guilty as charged.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Remember Jesse Ventura? Sure you do. A movie star and former wrestler, Ventura captured the governor’s seat in Minnesota a couple years back by giving a body slam to politics as usual. Lord knows I don’t agree with all the man’s opinions, nor all his policies neither. But I do like the fact that he is neither intimidated by the usual checklist of political pieties nor afraid to do battle with the powers that be. But those are strikes against Jesse, says Jonah Goldberg, in a recent issue of National Review.

Goldberg says Ventura is a “demagogue” who doesn’t see that, “the faults of the major parties stem from the fact that they are too democratic and too weak, not the reverse.… Untethered to any institution, Ventura is free to rant about the corruption of the cleanest political system in American history.…”

A demagogue, as you know, is an empty-​headed fellow, usually a former wrestler, who rouses the rabble by a lot of deceptive rhetorical bluster. I give Ventura more credit than that. I think he says what he believes. Nor can I agree that thumbing your nose at today’s political establishment is tantamount to original sin. After the last several years of virtually non-​stop scandal and corruption at the highest levels of office, I’m sorry, but anyone who thinks the political system is a hymn to integrity needs to pull his head out of the sand. But maybe Goldberg’s piece is really a slick parody of just that Ostrich-​like attitude.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.