The problem isn’t age, it’s entrenchment and corruption. Being old in office is a side effect, not the main problem.
We need term limits for Congress. If we had term limits, the only way an old person could get into office is if they were voted in when they were old. Being old doesn’t necessarily make one incompetent.
Congress makes national policy that affects all of us, but only a few people in each state vote for or against them. There should be some safeguard against them remaining in office for decades.
Many US states have term limits already. Their positive impact on governance has been nil. They just shift more power to the party apparatchiks, lobbyists and the civil service (someone has to have institutional knowledge, and it there’s a revolving door, the elected people never have time to acquire it). And when someone’s about to be termed out, their final year in office is a scramble to find their next political post.
The problem is that there are multiple problems, and some of the solutions aren’t close to the root cause. I’ll try my best to explain.
One can say that age alone isn’t the problem; it’s corruption. I’d personally say the problem isn’t term-limits; it’s the ignorance of the electorate in discerning who is ready to go.
Yes, Sanders is an outlier that proves that old age isn’t always a problem; but he’s also proof that term-limits have negative consequence – for he has been an exceptional Statesman for decades, and we would’ve lost him long ago, if we had term limits.
So in my opinion in terms of corruption, we are chasing symptoms instead of the root cause, which is helping the electorate identify when a politician is useless. Examples of this: Kentucky for McConnell, California for Feinstein, New York for Schumer, and Maine for Collins.
Independent of corruption, old age is certainly an issue though. But even from a corruption standpoint, these senile geriatrics know they’re not long for this world and have little stake in the long-term future of the country, or even being worried about being held accountable and spending years in prison. That alone matters.
I’d personally say the problem isn’t term-limits; it’s the ignorance of the electorate
I’d say that it’s disenfranchisement and the fact that elections arent mandatory. That makes it more advantageous for the non-working class to spend time at townhalls and at voting booths.
A man working 2 jobs 12 hours a day to support his family simply isn’t going to have the same kind of presence as a business owner who makes his own hohrs or retirees who no longee work full time. And that applies even to voting. So guess how the voter skews?
But mandatory voting isn’t even in the conversion right now. Term limits are and has precedent. We gotta try something.
Mandatory voting means more low-information voters who will vote reactively. I don’t see how that will help.
Australia has mandatory voting and its politics are just as broken as the UK’s (which has a similar parliamentary system) and nearly as hosed as the US.
My view is that the root cause is money in politics, which drives corruption. Everything else that’s being discussed is just displacement activity, “quick fixes” that are easier than dealing with the real problem, but don’t actually accomplish anything.
We need to enforce mandatory disclosure of all non-legislative income, to shut down legislators having side jobs at all, insider trading by legislators, prevent them taking cushy fake jobs when they leave office, shut down the current Citizens United system of institutionalized bribery, further control agents of foreign influence interfering in our politics, and brutally punish anything remotely approaching Trump levels of corruption. It’s hard and will require constant vigilance, but band-aids don’t help.
Yeah I’m amicable to term limits as one method of helping solve this, I just have concerns and will have to do more of a deep dive on the pros and cons. Sadly the issue with so many of these good ideas is that it still puts the cart before the horse. We know what needs to be done, but since the likes of term limits require literal Constitutional Amendments, that requires both widespread public consensus, and an ability to vote together and for legitimate representatives willing to play ball – which, naturally, is the very problem we’re trying to fix in the first place.
So we have the 3rd and 4th step… But how do we get there from here?
really hard to say. We first need to stop breaking our government and get adults back in the room. Then we need chains of actions that rebuilds trust amongst all of us, or enough of the apathetic to rule out the inevtiable MAGA propoganda. It’s not impossible because term limits are generally a positive topic (very few people like the idea of career politicians to begin with), but still an uphill battle
Alternatively, we could somehow garner massive support that even Trump can’t ignore. But that’s a harder order than the above.
Term limits are a double edged sword. You lose experience when you kick people out just because they have experience, not to mention taking away voter choice.
It might be better to limit consecutive terms to a low number, based on the length of the term of office. For example, no more than 2 consecutive terms as a US Senator, or something.
I agree with you that there’s a problem that needs solving.
These ghouls do their dardnest to make sure remove voter choice as is.
Besides, term limits don’t need to be 8 years. Make it 3-4 terms for Senate and 10 for House. The main idea isn’t a revolving door, but to make sure fossils older than my dead grandpa aren’t still in Congress controlling my (theoretical) kids future.
Well, that’s a different take than the one I responded to. You seem focused on age limits, which are not the same as term limits.
As the other person noted, term limits won’t keep old people from being elected, if they’re old when they’re first elected.
Not that they both can’t be problems worth addressing, but we should take care to define what it is we’re trying to solve, and solve it as directly as possible.
Yeah, the age thing doesn’t matter as much. You can technically be 30 and still be seriously hospitalized like this. You can be 80 and genuinely have the best interst for the country. it’s just more likely at 80 that you end up this way, on tubes and bitter at the world. T
he issues here is that represenatives have no incentive to actually do their job, or at least have minimum accountability from not doing their job as long as they are “the right people”. I beleive other countries have either recall processes for situations like this, or require X days per quarter in session before special elections can be triggered.
We should have multiple forms of accountability. Recalls, age and term limits, a cap on recesses and vacations, backup representatives when people go on vacation, requirements to attend town halls, and so forth.
Why not both age and term limits? The way I see it, they act as filtering layers that help remove problems. If one fails, the other might do the trick.
The problem isn’t age, it’s entrenchment and corruption. Being old in office is a side effect, not the main problem.
We need term limits for Congress. If we had term limits, the only way an old person could get into office is if they were voted in when they were old. Being old doesn’t necessarily make one incompetent.
Congress makes national policy that affects all of us, but only a few people in each state vote for or against them. There should be some safeguard against them remaining in office for decades.
Term limits for Congress.
Many US states have term limits already. Their positive impact on governance has been nil. They just shift more power to the party apparatchiks, lobbyists and the civil service (someone has to have institutional knowledge, and it there’s a revolving door, the elected people never have time to acquire it). And when someone’s about to be termed out, their final year in office is a scramble to find their next political post.
The problem is that there are multiple problems, and some of the solutions aren’t close to the root cause. I’ll try my best to explain.
One can say that age alone isn’t the problem; it’s corruption. I’d personally say the problem isn’t term-limits; it’s the ignorance of the electorate in discerning who is ready to go.
Yes, Sanders is an outlier that proves that old age isn’t always a problem; but he’s also proof that term-limits have negative consequence – for he has been an exceptional Statesman for decades, and we would’ve lost him long ago, if we had term limits.
So in my opinion in terms of corruption, we are chasing symptoms instead of the root cause, which is helping the electorate identify when a politician is useless. Examples of this: Kentucky for McConnell, California for Feinstein, New York for Schumer, and Maine for Collins.
Independent of corruption, old age is certainly an issue though. But even from a corruption standpoint, these senile geriatrics know they’re not long for this world and have little stake in the long-term future of the country, or even being worried about being held accountable and spending years in prison. That alone matters.
I’d say that it’s disenfranchisement and the fact that elections arent mandatory. That makes it more advantageous for the non-working class to spend time at townhalls and at voting booths.
A man working 2 jobs 12 hours a day to support his family simply isn’t going to have the same kind of presence as a business owner who makes his own hohrs or retirees who no longee work full time. And that applies even to voting. So guess how the voter skews?
But mandatory voting isn’t even in the conversion right now. Term limits are and has precedent. We gotta try something.
Mandatory voting means more low-information voters who will vote reactively. I don’t see how that will help.
Australia has mandatory voting and its politics are just as broken as the UK’s (which has a similar parliamentary system) and nearly as hosed as the US.
My view is that the root cause is money in politics, which drives corruption. Everything else that’s being discussed is just displacement activity, “quick fixes” that are easier than dealing with the real problem, but don’t actually accomplish anything.
We need to enforce mandatory disclosure of all non-legislative income, to shut down legislators having side jobs at all, insider trading by legislators, prevent them taking cushy fake jobs when they leave office, shut down the current Citizens United system of institutionalized bribery, further control agents of foreign influence interfering in our politics, and brutally punish anything remotely approaching Trump levels of corruption. It’s hard and will require constant vigilance, but band-aids don’t help.
Yeah I’m amicable to term limits as one method of helping solve this, I just have concerns and will have to do more of a deep dive on the pros and cons. Sadly the issue with so many of these good ideas is that it still puts the cart before the horse. We know what needs to be done, but since the likes of term limits require literal Constitutional Amendments, that requires both widespread public consensus, and an ability to vote together and for legitimate representatives willing to play ball – which, naturally, is the very problem we’re trying to fix in the first place.
So we have the 3rd and 4th step… But how do we get there from here?
really hard to say. We first need to stop breaking our government and get adults back in the room. Then we need chains of actions that rebuilds trust amongst all of us, or enough of the apathetic to rule out the inevtiable MAGA propoganda. It’s not impossible because term limits are generally a positive topic (very few people like the idea of career politicians to begin with), but still an uphill battle
Alternatively, we could somehow garner massive support that even Trump can’t ignore. But that’s a harder order than the above.
Term limits are a double edged sword. You lose experience when you kick people out just because they have experience, not to mention taking away voter choice.
It might be better to limit consecutive terms to a low number, based on the length of the term of office. For example, no more than 2 consecutive terms as a US Senator, or something.
I agree with you that there’s a problem that needs solving.
These ghouls do their dardnest to make sure remove voter choice as is.
Besides, term limits don’t need to be 8 years. Make it 3-4 terms for Senate and 10 for House. The main idea isn’t a revolving door, but to make sure fossils older than my dead grandpa aren’t still in Congress controlling my (theoretical) kids future.
Well, that’s a different take than the one I responded to. You seem focused on age limits, which are not the same as term limits.
As the other person noted, term limits won’t keep old people from being elected, if they’re old when they’re first elected.
Not that they both can’t be problems worth addressing, but we should take care to define what it is we’re trying to solve, and solve it as directly as possible.
ahh. I might have mixed up threads.
Yeah, the age thing doesn’t matter as much. You can technically be 30 and still be seriously hospitalized like this. You can be 80 and genuinely have the best interst for the country. it’s just more likely at 80 that you end up this way, on tubes and bitter at the world. T
he issues here is that represenatives have no incentive to actually do their job, or at least have minimum accountability from not doing their job as long as they are “the right people”. I beleive other countries have either recall processes for situations like this, or require X days per quarter in session before special elections can be triggered.
We should have multiple forms of accountability. Recalls, age and term limits, a cap on recesses and vacations, backup representatives when people go on vacation, requirements to attend town halls, and so forth.
Why not both age and term limits? The way I see it, they act as filtering layers that help remove problems. If one fails, the other might do the trick.