I say they are never going to vote for term limits for themselves. Not a chance.

I intellectually like the idea that term limits exist - they are elections.

However I have through the lens of experience realized that incumbency makes wealth and wealth makes corruption and corruption makes election difficult.

Yeah, 10 year limit in the House, 12 year limit in the Senate. Justices retire after 20 years.

The problem is gerrymandering.

term limits and the gerrymandering....

Agreed.

I have always been for both. Reasonable term limits for House and Senate and a 10 year term for the supreme court. I would also support a (1) 6 year term for President. But I would accept anything at this point, just not the status quo. Oh, and get big money out of politics. McCain/Feingold.

I suggest 18 years total for House and Senate combined.
13 years for Supreme Court, and President doesn't nominate them. They get nominated by a board comprised of law professors from a group of prestigious law schools. Each board member is newly chosen each time a seat on the Supreme Court opens.
We have to eliminate lifetime Congressional and SC seats, and political/religious appointees to the Supreme Court.
Yeah, I think a single 6 year term would be better than having a sitting, or previous, president run for reelection.

that term limits actually increase corruption.

Also, ALEC is a big back door supporter of term limits. Constant turnover in Congress means that elected officials are more likely to let a group like ALEC write legislation on their behalf.

Nothing is going to change until we stop our elections from being bought and paid for as well as our elected officials being bought and paid for. Term limits will put an extremely faulty bandage on a gaping wound.

With term limits you get legislators who spend years trying to get their footing in an extremely complex and political job, and lobbyists and other vested interests who have been in place for decades and know not only how the game is played, but how to play the new legislators. It is like bringing first graders into high school.

I'll have to remember that when I talk with people about term limits.

It is also, if you think about it, undemocratic (of course, our current system is extremely undemocratic as well but for very different reasons).

A 10 year limit in the House means AOC can only be in the House for 4 more years. If she likes being in the House (rather than moving to the Senate, for example) and her constituents like her representing them, limiting her to 4 more years is fundamentally undemocratic. It is telling her constituents that they are legally barred from being represented by the person of their choice.

is a good point too. It is wonderful to think that very many, if not most of the general population would make great legislators filled with common sense, capable, and proud to work for the general welfare of the nation. But that doesn't really seem to be the case. For many reasons our nation doesn't seem to produce a large number of people who fit the specialized requirements of an effective and uncorruptable legislator. If an electorate wishes to vote for someone, I think that we shouldn't tell them that they can't.
If the electorate chooses a corrupt individual lacking in empathy, in my opinion it is the electorate who need to be educated and I don't think that any measure less than the education of the electorate will suffice.

makes it harder for them to not be corrupted.

You want a politician to be in office for long enough to establish themselves, but not so long that they reach the stage where they are concerned less about their constituents and more about staying in office. Diane Feinstein, Strom Thurmond, and Mitch McConnell all come to mind. Moreover, there SHOULD be some turnover in the House and Senate; people may feel passionately about their representatives, but all too often this freezes out good politicians as well as bad ones for decades.

I like the 6 term House, 4 term Senate, 2 term president, and 20 year SCOTUS limits. I would also put age limits in place: no person can hold office if they will be 80 years or older at the end of such a term.

When the Constitution was created, it was extraordinarily rare for men or women to live beyond the age of 80 so there was no reason to add it. Now it's fairly routine, though physical health and stamina frequently decline rapidly thereafter, while the chance for debilitating diseases - cancers, strokes, dementia, and so forth, increases dramatically. I like formalising the concept of an Emeritus role (formally an Elder Statesman role) that would give people in that role exceptional access (Tribal Elders) but no formal authority.

Yes, you can point to people who have been powerful politically into their 80s and 90s (Pelosi, Biden, Ruth Baders Ginsberg, etc.) but it would also reduce the problem with people in decision making roles that shouldn't have been (Reagan, Trump, Strom Thurmond, etc. ).

I'd also be open to a 3 term president (present incumbent not withstanding). Twelve years is actually a pretty good arc - it gives you long enough in office that if you are an effective president, you will accomplish the changes that you want without becoming a permanent institution, and it mirrors that of other representative democracies. Yes, you will occasionally get the Trumps (though an age limit would solve that problem) and it would also have allowed a popular president such as Obama the chance to cement his legacy - imagine what Obamacare would have been like if he had been allowed to shape its passage another four years.

I have an objection to term limits for electees that I've never heard anyone else mention. Simply put, the voters who vote in each election are a different set of people. Suppose you have a very effective Senator representing you -- and you were 7 years old when they were elected. You grow up admiring this person, and almost everything you learn about them, including the votes they've taken in Congress, only increases your admiration. Then you turn 19 and finally you can vote for this person, who has done so much to help your District, and you are told "No, you can't vote for them, other people already voted for them twice." And you say "But about 20% of those people are dead now ! It's a completely different electorate ! Besides, why should I be denied my vote just because someone else already used theirs ?" In general, I favor policies that increase the number of available candidates, not reduce them, so that we can make the best choice from as broad a field as possible. That's not a perfect approach, but if you start to whittle away at the pool of candidates for fairly arbitrary reasons, you can leave yourself without a good candidate to oppose the GOP.

As much as I detest Trmp, I remember that the limit on Presidential terms was brought on by vengeful Republicans who were frozen out of the WH by a Dem President of unparalleled popularity. I wouldn't want to see Trmp have a chance at a third term -- but what rule would permit Trmp to run again, while not allowing Obama (or even Clinton) to do the same ?

As to SCOTUS -- for a long time I felt that this rule should be left as it is because it was effective for a very long time -- but that was due to GOP Senators taking their duty to "advise and dissent" seriously, rather than as a mechanism of ideological dominance. That no longer holds, indeed the opposite is thoroughly true. Add Mitch McConnell's sleazy, underhanded, traitorous manipulation of the process to prevent another Obama appointee while giving Trmp another open SCOTUS seat to fill with a grossly underqualified candidate, and it's clear Something Must Be Done. Term limits would not only limit the ability of a corrupt President to dismantle justice, but would remove most, if not all, of the advantage of picking very young candidates. Kavanaugh and Barrett would never have been nominated except for the possibility of their remaining on the bench longer than any more experienced, more qualified, older candidate. Set a term limit on SCOTUS appointees, and the "youth bonus" goes away, giving us older, more experienced judicial candidates of either party. It would also mean that older judges in lower courts would not be "frozen out" from advancement to the SCOTUS, which they are at present -- a grossly unjust arrangement.

As to the length of such appointments, I have trouble choosing. One possibility would be six- or seven-year appointments, with a reappointment of the same judge by the same President requiring a smaller margin of votes in Congress -- In the belief that a judge who made no really objectionable rulings would likely be as suitable a choice for *either* party as a new appointee with no track record -- or one deliberately more partisan, if Congress is uncooperative. Alternatively, appointments in the 9-14 year range would mean that a Justice who was particularly objectionable to one party or the other couldn't be replaced until 2-3 more Presidential terms were up. That has advantages and disadvantages, but it doesn't favor younger appointees nearly as much as the current situation.

I'm currently favoring a scheme by which the number of Justices is not limited, but the number of Justices appointed by a particular Administration is -- with both a maximum and a minimum. This would mean every POTUS got at least one (maybe two) chances to put forth a candidate, if not an actual appointment by default, and a two-term President two (maybe four). Of course, the total number on the Court would fluctuate, so four Justices from the same President wouldn't necessarily give the POTUS's party control of the SCOTUS. Nor would deaths or retirements necessarily mean an open position, removing a little bit of random chaos. I may write a little more on that in a separate post.

the problem with that is the power of incumbency and the money in politics. Throw in gerrymandering and you DON'T have "natural" term limits. It is unfortunate that we need to add limits to incumbency but what other choice do we have?

Keep playing by the rules of the past and you will always lose.

Not just who you think they should be limited to voting for, then count me in on that.

as we fight for democracy. Thank you for your replies.

Something like 80%+ support term limits. There is a real mode of wanting to end corruption and create a government that works for the people.

- Term limits for House, Senate, and supreme court
- End partisan gerrymandering
- Get the money out of politics
- Expand the House of Representatives
- Shorten election seasons
- Expand supreme court, but not in a partisan/packing way
- Get rid of the filibuster and other stupid rules and manuevers that jam everything up. Get legislation to the floor and vote on it.

A lot of this requires Constitutional amendments, but ot would be popular.

The lobbyists would be the deep state and our elected representatives would just be tourists.

We can horsetrade it for publicly funded elections.

I'd even repeal the 22nd.

At some point you have to ask, is it time to hang it up?

explore which Dem. reps., senators, govs.etc would have been out of office and what would they not have accomplished had those specific limits applied at that time.
And of course the reverse could.apply. What negative effect did their staying in office have on their overall effectiveness or lack thereof.

Part of the reason this may not be the right time for term limits is of course the massive restoration, reconstruction and rehabilitation that will have to happen across the whole of government when/if power shifts back to Dems.
Institutional memory will be hugely important.