Voting, Running for Office Each Can Impose Term Limits

Here's today's hot take.

Congressional term limits are overrated.

That's right, I said it. Term limits are things that people often push as a way to change the metaphorical kitty litter in Congress, but I say that the people have that power.

First of all, Congressional term limits can toss perfectly good representatives. Just because someone has been in their job for a long time, it doesn't mean that they deserve to be removed by an arbitrary term limit. If a Representative or a Senator is serving his or her constituency and they keep sending him or her back, that's the electoral will of the people.

Secondly, the ability to term limit a politician is cooked into the stew. It's called voting. As we've recently seen in Iowa where racist Steve King was tossed from office, a Senator or Congressperson can become so problematic that his constituents make the decision to push him out. Eliot Engel, a powerful Democrat in the House, was just defeated in the primary in New York by educator Jamaal Brown. If it matters enough to the constituents to remove someone's power, the voters do it.

Finally,  I would just say that if you're so up in arms that people have been around for too long in office, and you wan them out then run against them in the primary. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez did. Brown did. Heck, even Richard Mourdock did here in Indiana in 2012. Take your message to the voters. It's hard work, but there's nothing more powerful than beating an incumbent.

Granted, it's hard to beat an incumbent. They have influence, money and the power of the bully pulpit. Those are all things that need to be reformed. Ranked choice voting would help. Campaign finance reform would help, but an arbitrary number of years or terms someone can serve in Congress is not helpful, in my opinion.

I do believe in term limits for executive offices. Executives are singular individuals, and the longer they are in power the more they become drunk by it. Granted, this same argument can be used against the powerful Senators and Congresspeople, but one voice there is simply one voice. One voice as the President carries significantly more weight.

I know some will disagree with me, and that's fine. If term limits pass, I'm ok with it. I just think that term limits for the U.S. House and Senate don't need to be implemented because the mechanism exists to fix the problem of people hanging around the Capitol Building for too long.

Run for Office. Vote.