HOW ABOUT TERM LIMITS?
Every election cycle we seem to be presented with a choice between bad and awful for each major office. We then calculate the lesser of two evils, pinch our noses as tightly closed as we can get them, and vote. Along the way we may wonder: where do we get these people? It is not that we have never heard of them. Odds are they have all been deeply burrowed into their congressional seats or other political offices for many years, and over those many years we have never grown at all fond of them.
In theory, we have the power to get rid of the rulers we don’t like – just vote them out. But the same people keep turning up on our ballots. What to do? Then, as we drive home from the polling place, a melodious voice on the radio intones: “Term Limits!” We have our Aha! moment, and we are for term limits. But is it a solution?
Clearly our Founding Fathers did not intend a nation in which we would be ruled by an elite class of permanent office holders. And that’s without ever having met Nancy Pelosi. George Washington stunned the crowned heads of Europe by returning to his farm after two terms as president, and his successors dutifully followed his example. At least until 1940, when, surprise, surprise, a liberal Democrat (FDR, for the younger readers) declared himself to be the first essential man and ran for a third, then a fourth term.
After that we amended the Constitution to prohibit such presidential excess in the future, saving ourselves from the Idi Amin President-for-Life example. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has since ruled that only by constitutional amendment can congressional terms be limited. See US Term Limits v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995). Why not do a counterpart amendment for congresspersons* and senators? Because the amendment process gives congress the first power to rule on proposed amendments. Both house and senate must pass a proposed amendment, each by supermajority, before it can be forwarded to the States. One can imagine the likelihood of two thirds of our current lifetime rulers voting to limit their death grips on “their” seats.
So what do we do now? Your writer, being an attorney, humbly proposes the following federal statute, which would not run afoul of the US Term Limits case since it does not try to limit terms. Instead it would require the perpetual candidate to gamble with his own money rather than that of the taxpayers, and might have a real impact on the lifetime politician’s constant “I’m-taking-my-game-to-the-next-level” upwardly mobile conceit:
1. No person shall declare himself a candidate for, and/or campaign for nomination or election to, any elective office of the United States or any state or subdivision thereof while at the same time holding any other elective or appointive office of the United States. [Translation: neither Hillary nor BHO would be allowed to hold on to “their” Senate seat while taking a full year or two off at the taxpayers’ expense running for president; Kay Bailey Hutchison would not be allowed to hold on to “her” Senate seat while taking time off at the taxpayers’ expense running for Governor of Texas.]
2. No person shall declare himself a candidate for, and/or campaign for nomination or election to, more than one elective office of the United States at the same time. [Translation: Lyndon Johnson would not have been allowed to run for President of the United States and U.S. Senator from Texas at the same time.]
3. No person shall be eligible for appointment to the United States Senate who is related by blood or marriage to the appointing authority. [Translation: Lisa Murkowski would not be eligible to be appointed to the Senate by her father.]
4. No person shall be eligible to be elected to any elective office of the United States who has been declared legally dead prior to the election date for said office. [Translation: Missouri would no longer be allowed to elect dead people to the U. S. Senate; see 2000 election.]
5. No person named John McCain shall declare himself a candidate for, and/or campaign for nomination or election to, any elective office of the United States or any state or subdivision thereof, ever again. [Translation: None needed.]
6. No person holding any elective office of the United States shall ever refer to said office as “my seat”. The penalty for a first offense shall be $50,000.00, to be paid to the U.S. Treasury from the offender’s personal funds; each subsequent offense, if any, shall be double the previous penalty and payable as above. [Translation: It is probably more civilized than shooting them.]
The proposed statute, being only six paragraphs long, should easily fit on one piece of paper, thereby confusing our congresspersons*, who are accustomed to diligently poring through multi-thousand page bills. They may feel an overpowering urge to add a few thousand pages of amendments, each of which will no doubt be a great improvement.
Readers: by all means feel free to comment or suggest your own amendments. They would almost certainly be better than what Congress would come up with.
MO Atty
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