Term Limits and Pandering Photo-Ops
You may have seen this meme floating around the internet. I saw it on the wall of a Facebook friend of mine. He shared the post from someone else (who I think was the creator). My friend added, "Let's put in term limits for every representative and senator with a heaping side of wait period before a politician can become a lobbyist."
The original post had the text "This may upset you but..."
So, I want to talk about this. Term limits and pandering photo-ops.
Originally, I wrote this post as a Facebook reply, so I'll edit it to be more Blog-friendly. Please read and reply here or on the original post. I approve comments, so yours might not show immediately.
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TLDR: the Brookings article linked here is an excellent argument against congressional term limits and has most of my points within it. Here begins the original reply that I wrote:
The original poster of the meme wrote, "This may upset you but..."
Yep. This meme and its ideas both upset me.
I'm going to take a deep breath and then write a reasoned reply on why I strongly disagree with the position in this picture.
*DEEP BREATH*
While I'm trying to compose myself, please consider these perspectives and have an open mind to the idea that if you are in favor of term limits, you might be wrong on this issue. I say this because I think we see eye-to-eye on most issues. I just think that you're in the wrong on this one. I'm also going to share an edited version of this on my own Facebook wall (this blog post), because I have publicly ignored this issue for too long.
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Yes, this picture was a photo-op that was 100% stupid pandering. Yes, it's sad that pandering still has a place in 2020. I'll talk pandering and its pros-and-cons some other time (although I'd argue that if any populations in the United States should see MORE politicians pandering to them and trying to appear as if those politicians hear their concerns, it's the African-American and Native-American communities that have been mistreated for at least the past 400 years--after all, perception becomes reality).
The meme uses the argument that old politicians who have been "in power" for a long time should have done more to help BIPOC over their tenure. The author implies that because systemic racism is such a problem, clearly these politicians are ineffective and should not be in office anymore. He somehow links this to both parties and equates kneeling in silence (with however wrongfully culturally-appropriated garb) with clearing protesters through violence to pose in front of a church. It's a false-equivalency argument that's common on the right, but it serves the purpose of shining a light on long-held seats and the politicians who serve in those positions. The author heavily implies that these people should not be in office because of their long-standing positions and therefore they should be term-limited and removed.
I completely disagree.
Casey Burgat of GWU and the Brookings Institute (a center-left think tank and common boogeyman of the left-wing Twitterverse--mostly because it’s full of experts who don’t share the same opinions of those who think they know better because their lived experience clearly “trumps” any actual scientific data, statistics, or research... and yes, I used that word deliberately) has a better response than anything I could write, so I’ll start with that 2018 article.
Read it here: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/01/18/five-reasons-to-oppose-congressional-term-limits/
The opening quote in his article from Rep. Roger Sherman (1788) reads, “Nothing renders government more unstable than a frequent change of the persons that administer it.”
Here are some highlights with my thoughts on that article and related information, and I’ll start with the arguments in favor of the one that the post/meme is making:
1. Term limits are incredibly popular. I’ll give you that. In this era of divisiveness, it’s hard to find something we can all agree on. Rasmussen (2016) said that 74% of Americans support congressional term limits (+/- 3% margin of error).
That’s sky-high.
74% of Americans have been wrong before.
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| George W. Bush Approval Rating, By Jean-Francois Landry at English Wikipedia. - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53757897 |
George W. Bush’s poll numbers were even higher than that in some polls in 2003 and almost all polls in 2002. (Aside: He left office at ~34% approval.)
People can be wrong when they don’t have all the facts. When people learned how the Bush administration manufactured the reasons to invade Iraq and they completely botched domestic emergencies, voters realized he was pretty awful at his job, and his priorities were not good for the country.
2. Term limits are supposed to limit the need to “dial for dollars” and reduce the influence of money in politics. If anything, the opposite is true. The majority of campaign spending is introducing yourself to voters who would not otherwise know you and your qualifications. Without money, this is currently impossible. Should elections all be publicly-funded? Yes. Do term limits help this problem? No way.
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| Former Rep. David Jolly (R-FL), a Never-Trump Republican. Photo Credit: CBS News https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-are-members-of-congress-becoming-telemarketers/ |
3. Term limits are supposed to get rid of the “corruption in Washington” that takes idealistic freshman lawmakers and turns them into do-nothing seat-warmers. What do freshman politicians do when they get to Washington? They try to learn how everything works. How do you write a bill? How do you pick a committee? How do committees choose business and when do issues get brought to the floor? What type of interactions with lobbyists are okay and what are not? How do I know a “donor” from a “lobbyist” from a “constituent?” When all of the "old guard" is gone, suddenly the people telling them how things work are only the staffers and the lobbyists.
Oops. That didn’t help.
Go look at AOC’s December 2018 and January 2019 Instagram feed (or her Facebook, or Twitter posts, or any of the media from that time) to see how this currently works. Imagine how it would be different if there were no senior elected leaders. Imagine there was no ELECTED party infrastructure to support other elected officials. Imagine that there was only a behind-the-scenes group of former politicians, business leaders, and lobbyists telling these freshmen Congresspeople how the wheels of government worked.
Imagine how that would work. Or don’t imagine it. Go watch “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” to see how it worked before transparency laws. The movie may be fiction, but it captured the graft and rampant corruption that went on when lobbyists and unelected party leaders had MORE control over the government. Hell, we didn’t even have real presidential primary elections until after the political mess of 1968. Until then, everything was just decided by party leaders in backroom deals.
4. Back to Congress, another argument in favor of term limits is that the big three democrats--notice they’re not hitting McConnell, or McCarthy, or Scalise, or Cornyn, or Graham, or anyone else in a GOP seat--the big three have been around and “nothing has changed.”
Nothing has changed.
Really?
Are you freaking kidding me?
In 2008, Democrats (with Pelosi becoming presumptive Speaker) won majorities in the House and Senate (and Presidency) because voters saw how Republicans had torpedoed the country and destroyed the economy since the housing crisis and the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. Democrats saved the economy (with no help from Minority Leader McConnell, I might add), passed the ACA getting 20 million people added to health insurance (which of course did not go nearly far enough), created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, relaxed cannabis laws, passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, lifted bans on scientific research into stem cells, banned torture, fought for expanding voter rights, fought for gun control measures, fought to preserve the voting rights act (despite a conservative Supreme Court deciding it was no longer important or relevant)... The list goes on.
To quote Civics Nation, “No party is as pure as people would like to believe it is. The Democrats definitely have a checkered history, but overall, Democratic presidents have led many reform efforts and created many programs that we still hold sacred even today.”
5. Okay, there’s one more argument that term-limits supporters make. It’s that we should ignore the voters. Who cares what those people think, right? I know better than those voters over there! This is BS and it stems from the idea that people don’t like government. The anti-government crusade can declare victory. The fight is over.
Pro-government supporters--those people with the wild and crazy idea that government can be a force for good--will never recover.
We should all just pack it in, admit that the government can never do anything good for anyone, and stop trying.
Oh, wait. You don’t think so?
Then... maybe we should let people elect their leaders? And maybe we should let the voters decide who those leaders are instead of trying to say, “You can vote for whoever you want as long as it isn’t someone who’s done the job for a long time?” Okay, I think I made my point.
Term limits are, as my brother once said, “a solution in search of a problem.” (Link is not to my brother's post, but another with the same statement.)
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So here’s why we should NOT have term limits:
1. Voters should get to pick their leaders. We don’t get to pick their leaders for them. That’s why I can’t vote in your Congressional election if you live in another district. Do I like who you elected? No? Well, too bad. Good thing there are hundreds of others who were elected that I like more than the guy you picked. Also, it's a good thing that elections come quickly for the House. I just wish more people participated in them. The Federal system is not perfect. It’s better than anything else we’ve seen.
2. Expertise matters. Congresswoman Sharice Davids, the freshman rep from my district, knows way more about transportation and infrastructure than I do. She was a lawyer specializing in that field before being elected. Guess what? She’s on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Now, would I tell her how airports and railroads should run? No! Would I add my thoughts to a survey that her office puts out about where I’d like to see new mass transit systems? Sure! If she serves thirty-six years in Congress and Kansas City never gets an inter-state metropolitan light rail system with a partial loan from the federal government, should I be upset? Probably, but that’s what primaries are for. Or maybe I could question what’s getting in the way of the idea and observe that Rep. Davids has been fighting for that issue since she was sworn in. Maybe I’d be an informed voter who knew what was happening. Maybe I would not. But would Joe from Jacksonville or Honey from Houston know what Rep. Davids fought for over thirty-six years? No. They’d just see that Rep. Davids is still in Congress and there’s so much wrong with our country so I’m going to blame her for everything.
3. If you're term-limited, there’s no reason to become skilled. If you’re elected and know you’re term-limited, why would you learn to do your job better? I strive to be a better teacher because I know I’m in it for the long haul, because I want to learn, because I want to do better for my students NOW but I also want to do better for my students LATER. If I know that there is no later, why would I try to do better? Brain drain is a thing, and it’s a real thing, and it’s a dangerous thing. The undermining of expertise--the anti-intellectualism that pervades America is subtle and overwhelming at the same time. It rears its ugly head here yet again. (Note, that anti-intellectualism is also one of the core reasons for the loss of faith in mainstream media reporting that US conservative politicians adore so much, but I digress yet again.)
4. If there are term limits, there’s no way to keep popular lawmakers. You don’t have a fall-back mechanism in place other than moving on to a possible different office. What if you’re GOOD at your job? Let me put this a different way.
You like AOC, right? Do you want to tell me that when AOC turns 41, she gets kicked out of the House because she’s served for 12 years? Now, AOC herself has said that she has her eyes on higher office (Senate or Executive-level), and I have no problems with her ambitions. That said, if she’s popular in her district (or state for the Senate), why should she have to go?
5. Term limits encourage corruption. There is actually scientific evidence that term limits INCREASE corruption in legislative bodies. Until we reform money out of politics and go to something like “democracy vouchers,” money will still rule politics because voters won’t vote for you if they don’t know you. Why did Biden dominate the primary? Among other reasons, he and Bernie were the only people with 100% name recognition. Every primary voter knew him. If you cannot introduce yourself to voters in a way that builds trust, you cannot win an election. If you can’t afford signs, and ads, and rallies, and transportation, you can’t win. Elections are horribly expensive. If we want them to be fair and open, they need to be free. Since they’re not, we need people who can raise money. (God, I hate writing that.)
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The longest-ever serving member of Congress was John Dingell (1926-2019, Michigan rep from 1955-2015). You know what he fought for? Rights for working people and minorities. You know why he kept going back? Because he was elected again and again. John Dingell was a great Congressman who fought to make things better. Know what he did before he was elected? He was a lawyer, a prosecutor, a legal research assistant, an Army veteran, and--get this--a Congressional page. He was an expert in every sense of the word. He knew Congress and he knew how to get things done. He was not perfect, of course. Humans never are. Would I have voted for him if I lived in his district? Oh yes. Every time.
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The three people in your picture that were highly criticized were Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Jerry Nadler, and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. So, let’s talk specifically about them for a minute.
Nancy Pelosi was first elected to the House in 1987 as part of a special election when Rep. Sala Burton died of colon cancer. Pelosi won 63.3% of the vote in the June run-off (36% in the first special election in April). From that point on, she won every election and never received below 71% in her district. Pelosi is wildly popular in the California 12th (she won with 86% of the vote in 2018). She’s an ally of LGBT groups, environmental groups, the NAACP, and local, state, and national leaders. She’s an expert in every sense of the word. She’s also the ultimate boogeyman for the Fox News crowd. They love to hate her. She’s a powerful woman who they can’t touch, so they constantly try to cut her down. She’s very unpopular outside of California, yes. (Though lately, she’s actually the most nationally popular member of Congressional Leadership according to Rasmussen. They have Pelosi at -3% favorable vs. unfavorable, Schumer at -7%, McCarthy at -7%, and McConnell at -16%).
Anyway, the argument that Pelosi could have gotten more done than she has actually accomplished could be a valid one... Except for the whole “facts” thing. See, the GOP is the “Party of No” and it has been ever since 2008. When did Pelosi become Speaker? Oh, it was 2007? You mean when Bush was still President? Okay. So, what about when she finally got the gavel, had a friendly Senate, and had a friendly President? See above. Lily Ledbetter. ACA. CFPB. Financial rescue. Etc. Well, what about after all of that? See, this little thing in 2010 happened. The Tea Party. Paul Ryan. I don’t know how much my dear readers know about Congress, but the minority party can’t do a damn thing in the House (and not much in the Senate either). Pelosi’s power vanished with the fickle tides of a racist backlash to the election of our first black president. Then 2014 the Senate was lost (possibly forever). Pelosi has been a victim of history and has still been the single most effective and powerful female politician in US history. (See the Sun-Sentinel editorial for an excellent argument about this.
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/editorials/fl-op-edit-nancy-pelosi-mitch-mcconnell-20191220-epaerhp5zbeivibcy5z7kzykoa-story.html)
So, what about Jerry Nadler? Nadler is a pro-labor rep from New York’s 10th. He’s a career politician and was first elected to office in 1977 as a state assemblyman. In 1992, he went to Congress on the back of a 59.7% majority. He continued winning from that point on, earning crushing victories with the lowest percentage of 54.7% in 2002 (which was still a 30-point victory in the five-way race), and a highest of 89.5% in 2016 (he won with 82.1% in 2018). Nadler is also wildly popular in his district. He’s extremely pro-union, endorsed repeatedly by the AFL-CIO and other organizations, and he’s thoughtful, competent, and methodical in his practice. He’s got his juris doctorate from Fordham and was a legislative assistant before he ran for office. He... well, he knows what he’s doing. He is also an odd choice to add to this meme. Most people only know who he is because of his role in Trump's impeachment. His addition to the list is... telling.
So let’s look at Chuck Schumer’s electoral history. Schumer won his senate seat in 1998 with 53.7% of the vote (hardly overwhelming... wait... that was a nearly sixteen point victory in the six-way race!). He was re-elected in a seven-way race with 62.1% in 2004 (a 39-point victory), in 2010 with 64% of the vote (a 33-point victory), and in 2016 with 70.7% of the vote (a 43-point victory). Schumer is incredibly popular in New York. Before he was elected to the Senate, he served 18 years in the US House and 5 years in the NY State Assembly. He has a juris doctorate and an AB from Harvard and went straight into politics after law school. Why should I tell New Yorkers that they can’t vote for him anymore? He’s brilliant and an expert. Do I agree with him all the time? Nope! Should New Yorkers get to vote for him if they want to? Yep!
Okay, so what about Chuck’s accomplishments? Surely Schumer should have done something! (What an alliteration.) Minority Leader Schumer has never had the Senate gavel. He was never the Majority Leader--that was Harry Reid, a centrist dealmaker. He’s never had the power to direct the Senate’s process. So, the idea that he could get something done as Minority leader is laughable prima facie. But, let’s give the benefit of the doubt and say he could have pushed for things while Reid held the gavel. Sure. Okay. Again, we have the same argument as the Pelosi one above. Equal pay. Healthcare. The CFPB. Etc. That said, what about race? Schumer was one of the “Gang of Eight” who wrote the immigration reform bill that had bipartisan support before the Tea Party forced the GOP speaker to kill it. He has repeatedly pushed for the DREAM act. He constantly fights for better governance. What about African Americans? Schumer is a pro-Affirmative Action Democrat who has a 100% rating from the NAACP (2019). Is that enough of a gauge of his support for the Black community for you?
To sum all this up, term limits are bad.
The politicians in the photo are good.
The meme is wrong.
To quote the end of the Brookings article,
“...precisely because the creation of successful public policies by even the most experienced of officials is so difficult and uncertain, we should not mandate that our most effective and seasoned lawmakers be forced out of the institution. Instead, as constituents, we should rely on the most effective mechanism available to remove unresponsive, ineffectual members of Congress: elections.”
Sources
P.S. The person who posted the original meme is a fairly right-leaning “independent” from Iowa who is probably not the most... pro-minority person I’ve ever encountered online. He’s got a number of Evangelical and conservative ideas shared on his FB feed, so I think he might have a slight bias against the officials in question. However, I saved pointing this out for the end, because I wanted to attack his argument rather than engage in ad hominem fallacies. Just be careful and consider the author's purpose before sharing, please.
P.P.S. I'd also suggest that you not remove the meme from your wall (unless you come up with a better one), and should instead engage in further discussion about the topics to the benefit of your platform audience and healthy discourse in general.
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