Terms Limits vs. Cultural Rot
it's a mismatch
Suddenly, and reasonably, gerontocracy is a much-discussed topic in the news:
Like every other word written about every single topic on the face of the earth these days, the not-hugely-subtle subtext seems to be about stopping Trump, and we should definitely pass new rules right away saying that no one over the age of 70 should be allowed to run for office anymore:
But there’s still a real discussion to be had on the topic, as the 88 year-old Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley runs for an eighth six-year term in the U.S. Senate — and his 89 year-old Democratic colleague Dianne Feinstein reportedly has days when she can’t recognize other senators.
The other solution people turn to, after age limits, is term limits, a phrase that’s seeing decent traffic on Twitter:
But let me introduce you to Sheila Kuehl, because we have term limits in California. Kuehl is in the local news quite a bit this week, because she’s a politician and some cops searched her house as part of a corruption investigation. Actual headline in the Los Angeles Times:
Imagine what the country is coming to when law enforcement uses search warrants to force entry into the homes of political leaders, right? Fortunately, no one can think of any comparable recent examples of this kind of vindictive political stunt, so.
But here’s the important part for a discussion of gerontocracy: Kuehl, who is 81 years old, has twice termed out of elected offices. She was forced to leave the California Assembly after three terms, so she ran for a seat in the California Senate; then she served in the Senate for two terms, leaving when she was termed out. So now she’s a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
Term limits didn’t force her out of elected office; they just forced her to shop for new ones.
Similarly, the dumbest man in California politics….
….passed through the Assembly and the Senate, leaving a trail of idiocy behind him, before frantically digging his claws into a long series of other races for elected office, including efforts to gain a seat in the US Senate and an LOL shot at becoming the mayor of Los Angeles. He currently serves on the Los Angeles City Council, where the photo at the top of his official officeholder page is a classic of the masks-are-for-the-peasants form:
So term limits stop politicians from holding an office forever, but they don’t drive anyone out of the political class. They turn the quest for political office into a lifelong game of “the floor is lava,” except that the floor is being a normal person and getting a real job. Like I said, THE FLOOR IS LAVA.
The problem is the existence of this class of low-imagination parasitic office-clingers, who can’t conceive of a life outside of politics and elective sinecures. We could fix that without term limits, by the simple act of checking a different box from time to time. It’s curious that we don’t, and note the reaction to the one guy who had a career in real estate before he ran for just the one elected office. We just can’t quit these idiots, and it shouldn’t be that hard.
I've never favored term limits. I voted against term limits in California whenever that was on the ballot—1996, I guess. Any time anyone calls for term limits nationally, I say: "Look at California." Term limits empower the permanent bureaucracy. And, as you point out here, the same bad apples cycle through different offices anyway. Also—this is one nobody loves to hear—term limits let voters off the hook.
Politics isn't easy. Democrats learned decades ago how to "game" term limits. They cultivate a deep bench of candidates. They run for—and win!—nonpartisan offices, such as city council and school board seats. Water policy is boring as hell, but elected water boards are very powerful. I've met countless Republican activists who make these quixotic runs for state and even federal office and yet the thought of running for local office is anathema. Very few will entertain the idea. Those who do—and who run successfully—have ended up in the state legislature and, in a couple of cases, Congress. But that's retail politics and ain't nobody got time for that.
Good stuff, as always, Bray.
At the Federal level we’re electing TV actors who have no power over the actual government of 3 millions and 1-2X as many contractors.
So its all Carnies anyway (TV and the media are full of people who would have been Carnival performers a century ago).
Who knows at the State level.
The real Gerontocracy is the Civil Service, where the multiple offices are held at once to get 2-3 paychecks. The elected are not allowed by law and rules to touch our pure and virtuous civil service with their grubby politics, but that negated the vote. Life is hard choices, eh?