It’s A Shame Nikki Haley Has To Rely On ‘Stale’ Gimmicks
“In the America I see, the permanent politician will finally retire,” Haley explained. “We’ll have term limits for Congress. And mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old.” Term limits were already around in the Roman republic and Athenian democracy. These days, it’s a cheap way to tap into voter anger at the political class. And, hey, I hate those monsters as much as the next person. But the returns on limiting legislative terms are negligible, at best. It rarely promotes better governance or less incompetence or corruption. Most partisans vote lockstep, whether new or old.
What term limits often end up doing is forcing out the handful of legislators with genuine expertise or institutional knowledge and replacing them with more amateurish ideologues. Does anyone believe George Santos or Eric Swalwell have improved the aptitude or decency of Congress merely because they’re newer?
Term limits also end up making our lives more politics-obsessed while creating instability in legislatures — which wouldn’t be terrible if it didn’t also create stronger executive branches. A lame-duck politician, the thinking goes, is going to be more responsive to voters because he has no reason to ingratiate himself to the powerful. The ugly reality is that term-limited politicians often need institutional support more because they want to run elsewhere — in states with term limits, politicians play musical chairs their entire careers — or they want an administrative appointment, or they want to run the party apparatus or find some cushy lobbying position. They need voters less.
Cincinnatus is a myth.
