Why does the left generally oppose term limits and the right generally support them?
Despite any rationale put forth by either side my experience and cynicism suggests that the reason for one position or the other is to stay in or regain power and any arguments put forth are just a smokescreen.
But what’s the straight dope?
You’re going to get speculation because there are no hard facts.
Goody. Here we go.
The general arguments against term limits fall into a few categories. Incumbents use patronage and pork to hold onto power, advantages no challengers can match. (Retention rates for incumbents regularly top 90%.) Incumbents fall out of touch with their districts and fail to recognize change. Incumbents grow old and senile in office.
The pros are that incumbents pile up seniority and get more power and better committee assignments. They become experts in their specialties. And don’t forget, they have more pork to distribute to their district.
If there is a left/right dimension to this, throw around generalities like the left likes expertise and democracy, wanting to leave the decision to voters, not power brokers, and the right are suspicious of lifelong politicians and believe that people who have more private sector experience should be involved.
I’m a socialist, so I would be considered on the left here, and I don’t oppose term limits. I don’t know other leftists who oppose them as well. I think all elected or appointed positions should have term limits, including the Supreme Court and all political offices. So I’m not sure where you are getting that we oppose them, unless you are talking about liberals (which is debatable if they are on the left).
My biggest from-the-left issue with legislative and executive term limits is that they’re undemocratic. Voters should generally be free to choose their representatives in a way that best represents their preferences, and term limits are an arbitrary interference with that.
For the judiciary, I’d like to see them serve terms (no lifetime appointments), but don’t see a problem with having them eligible for reappointment/confirmation after finishing a term.
*I oppose age and natural-born-citizen requirements for the same reason.
Do I really need to make a list of right wing politicians and their long careers in elected positions?
I don’t see how it’s debatable when it’s the very definition of “left.”
Do I take it you also oppose the current term limit in place for the office of president?
Yup, tried to imply that by including “executive.” Mayor, governor, whatevs.
I oppose term limits for anything other than the president.
For non-presidential positions, term limits just make sure that you never have anyone competent in the legislature (federal or state/local). So, rather than understanding issues themselves, the representatives end up going to industry lobbyists to write laws. There’s no reason to find common ground, since you’re out the door in a few years anyway.
At the presidential level, the difference for me is that a president who is around for 15, 20, 30 years would have too much entrenched power and would be very difficult to vote out. If the army generals are all your friends and most of the judiciary owes their position to you, power becomes too concentrated at the top. Governors don’t have that kind of potential to become authoritarians that a president would have.
On the specific subject of how Democrats and Republicans view term limits, I didn’t realize it was that kind of issue. I guess Republicans like to have a weak government, and term limits definitely weaken government, since no one ever becomes expert at their job?
I’ve never observed it as being a left/right issue. It’s usually more of an in power/out of power issue.
I question the premise. A 2018 poll found overwhelming support for term limits among both Republicans and Democrats, as well as independents. True, Democrats were somewhat less likely than Republicans to support the idea, but even so 76% of Democrats support term limits for congressional seats.
Gosh, you don’t mean there’s a difference between what they say and what they do?
I think it’s actually worse. There’s something to the notion that if you think you already own the support structure that new elected officials will turn to then you don’t care about who’s ‘face’ is, apparently, running the show.
I think this is true to some extent, but when you compare it to the various undemocratic ways that existing politicians have to retain power, like getting to select their own constituents by drawing gerrymandered districts, I tend to think that a few undemocratic thumbs on the scale against the incumbents are warranted.
I think a good compromise for term limits is to have a generous limit. If the limit is 18 or 20 years, that’s plenty of time for a whole career in politics, and if a politician is still popular and wants to continue to hold office, well, there are other offices they can go for.
I was unaware that term limits were much of a left/right partisan issue.
Here is an article by Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank.
Here is one from the Brookings Institution, although they are centrist.
Elizabeth Warren opposes them, although that does not mean she is representative of the left. Mitch McConnell said, “We have term limits now–they’re called ‘elections’.”
Pretty much. This is something that I had immediate experience with working with legislators at the state/local levels when the sweep of term-limit-mania hit in the 90s. Severe attrition of experienced hands. Sharp spike in the number of “model bills” presented by noobs and produced by outfits like ALEC and Heritage.
Legislatures being collective bodies, there is not the sort of concern about cemented power as happens with the executives. The seniormost chairman can still, if a challenger has skills and guts, get outvoted 14/13 I DO prefer term limits in unipersonal chief executive positions with high degree of power, and I do not limit them to president, but would add to it governors in states where that office is powerful or there are strong party machines, and mayors of comparable scope. This for the abovementioned purposes of avoiding lifetime entrenchment – and not just the entrenchment of that individual but the entrenchment of those around him who’d feel they don’t want to be replaced in their appointments. Also, in order to give people in your same party with ambition to get to the top the assurance that every so many years, that office will be perforce “open” so your chance to seek it fair and square will come.
My home jurisdiction never adopted term limits but one thing I got to look into at my legislature was that the pressure about term limits seemed to involve an overestimation of the problem: when I researched, I found that consistently, in any given term, the “hump” of the curve were those between 4 to 12 years service, but that when you looked at the long trailing tail, the “lifers” at the upper end were really long-lifers. This of course at the state-legislature level where it is much easier to mount a “retail” challenge.
And this is a good point. Have a career, get experience, do useful things… and move along. Otherwise we have to ask if we’re objecting not just to someone being 20 years in the same post but to just having them around at all in one way or the other for 20 years.
The US House has an interesting twist on this: the Republican Legislative Conference has in its bylaws term limitations on how long someone can hold a particular committee/subcommitee chairman/ranking member post. That way they are able to give the people who pay their dues a chance at rising in the ranks without having to wish that Congressman Getoffmylawn hurry up and die already, or mount a caucus coup. However, it also has been criticized for effect of weakening the long-established leaders and even driving some of them to early retirement (because who wants to be just a very senior backbencher when you can make bank going into lobbying?).
I’m very left-wing and opposed to term limits. First, because “let the voters decide”, and secondly because the right has more money, so they will always have the edge in a race with no incumbency advantage. I think once we actually find a politician who can communicate progressive ideas to ordinary voters, we need to hold on to them. Like if there were term limits for Congress, who thinks Vermont would have elected a different Socialist candidate in every election since 1990?
I don’t see a left/right divide. It’s more the fringe of the left and the right. I’m sure that has to so with the fact that the fringe rarely wins
In my observations, regardless of party affiliation, people are in favor of term limits for the other guy, but not their own.
From a small data set (my Facebook feed) I’d say only right wingers favor them. I personally oppose them since it eliminates anyone acquiring expertise in any area. In my former job in state government, I was tasked with answering moronic questions such as “if we made our bridges last twice as long without costing any more money, how much money could we save?” We never had to answer such stupid questions before term limits.
Honestly, that’s what I hate about the debate is it’s usually just thrown out there as “Do you support term limits?” That lumps together everyone who would support 10 terms for Reps with everyone who wants 2 terms for Reps.