3. HEAR SOME ARGUMENTS AGAINST TERM LIMITS
"We should not restrict the ability of the voters to elect whomever they think will be most qualified."
The Argument: Term limits only serve to disallow the reelection of popular politicians. Why prevent proven leaders from seeking to retain their jobs? Additionally, when incumbents run for reelection, the campaign tends to focus on their record so voters are able to make more informed decisions than when faced with a choice of two candidates with whom they are totally unfamiliar. Most importantly, there is no need to make restrictions about who is qualified for an office; instead, voters should make the decision. If people want fresh ideas, then they will elect someone new, but it is undemocratic to deny them the option of voting for a candidate simply because he or she has already served for a few terms.
The Response: While this is a good point in theory, in practice the advantages of being an incumbent prevent elections between longtime office holders and new challengers from giving voters meaningful choices. It is often nearly impossible to raise money for a campaign that challenges someone who has held an office for a long time, so the voters never hear the message of the challenger. Voters usually choose incumbents over their rivals, about whom they usually know next to nothing, but that does not seem like much of a choice. The wishes of the voters would be better served by a totally even election, which would require restricting the ability of politicians to hold the same office indefinitely.
"Experience is important in any job. Term limits would require that our leaders be novices."
The Argument: You wouldn't want to be operated on by a doctor who had never performed surgery before or to be represented by a lawyer who had never been to trial before. The same rule holds for politicians. Being an effective leader involves more than having opinions on the handful of major issues that decide campaigns; Congressional subcommittees, for example, have to handle a lot of specific, technical questions and committee members only learn about the complex issues involved through years of seeing similar problems being dealt with. Term limits would remove all senior members from these committees and destroy the continuity of committee membership from term to term.
The Response: Term limits only prevent people from holding the same office for too long, not from staying in politics generally. People who are elected to important positions will likely have experience in similar areas. Moreover, a politician's beliefs are more important than his or her experience. Difficult technical questions are handled by appointed specialists and most members of Congress have advisors on such issues. Our current system favors experience at the expense of totally fair elections, and by so doing obscures debates over ideological issues.
"The possibility of reelection is what compels politicians to serve the people. If term limits are instituted, there will be little incentive for elected officials to perform well in their last term."
The Argument: Everyone needs an incentive to do his or her job well. For politicians, this incentive is reelection: if campaign promises are not met then politicians can expect to lose their jobs. However, term limits will create a group of elected officials (i.e., those in their final terms of eligibility) for whom there is no incentive to act as promised. Having leaders who are no longer dependent on the approval of the people is problematic and antithetical to democracy.
The Response: Politicians often move from one government job to another, so elected officials who want to remain in government still have an incentive to perform well: they can use their position to establish their credentials for another office. Also, this point has little basis in history. Second term Presidents, for example, have not been any less worthy than they were in their first terms.
