Your Thoughts on Term Limits

[bafbrian]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/07/...its/index.html

A friend of mine at work e-mailed this link to me and I thought it was an it was an interesting read. I had spoke about this when I was in college working on my degree. Seemed to me that this topic is gaining more steam with current situation progressing as it do. Wanted to see what IA's thoughts on the matter are.

[bu villain]

I'm undecided at this point. I have heard good arguments from both sides. I will say this though, term limits probably wouldn't be necessary if people just took the time to learn about each candidate and vote for the one that truly represented them.

[Total_Blender]

I really don't think it will peep anyone who is corrupt out of office. If anything the increased turnover could even lead to more corruption because the increase in available offices creates more opportunities for patronage. We also lose the seniority and knowledge of procedure politicians like Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd had.

The Right will try to make it seem like long serving career politicians are primarily a Left thing but Strom Thurmond, Thad Cochran, Don Young, Chuck Grassley, and lots of other Republicans have had long incumbencies.

[BanginJimmy]

I really don't think it will peep anyone who is corrupt out of office. If anything the increased turnover could even lead to more corruption because the increase in available offices creates more opportunities for patronage. We also lose the seniority and knowledge of procedure politicians like Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd had.

I agree with you to a point, but the idea of term limits will also avoid the stigma of a career politician and forcing most of them to eventually get a real job at some point. This will be may be enough to keep some of them partially honest.

To add to that, the problem with American politics is that every election is nothing but a reason for the parties and participants to attack each other. You rarely, if ever, find a candidate that clearly states his positions on a subject then runs on that. All you get is a vague reference to a semi popular idea and attacks against opponents with most of the attacks being innocent remarks that have been cut and pasted in an inflammatory way. The current president is a perfect example of this. His entire campaign was made up of 3 words, hope, change, and Bush. Unsurprisingly, we are still at that exact same point today, hope, change, Bush.

The Right will try to make it seem like long serving career politicians are primarily a Left thing but Strom Thurmond, Thad Cochran, Don Young, Chuck Grassley, and lots of other Republicans have had long incumbencies.

Cant miss a chance to attempt on the right can you? Not surprising considering one of your heroes should have spent most of those years in prison for negligent homicide instead of congress.

Strom Thurmond started his career as a democrat, then changed parties in 1964.

[Total_Blender]

Strom Thurmond started his career as a democrat, then changed parties in 1964.

Even if you only count his years as a Republican thats still close to a 40 year term. Also worth noting that 1964 was the end of the "Goldwater era" and the beginning of the "Southern strategy".