Gov. Ron DeSantis has found a new gimmick to keep his name out there and hopefully restore his damaged political prospects.
It’s term limits for Congress.
Sounds good. Looks good on a bumper sticker. And it will never happen.
Its popular appeal owes to how deceitful it is. It capitalizes on public revulsion of Congress (approval rating, 15%). But term limits would make things worse.
It would distract the nation from what would actually improve Congress: a ban on gerrymandering, campaign spending limits, and repeal of the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision in Citizens United that opened the floodgates of special interest money.
Another phony issue
Avoiding real reform is probably DeSantis’ greater goal, while giving him a phony issue to exploit.
It won’t happen because it requires amending the U.S. Constitution, which is very difficult, as it should be. But such an effort should be for the right results, and this isn’t.
DeSantis, Florida’s most prolific fundraiser, co-chairs a national term limits effort. His co-chair is David Trone, a former Democratic congressman from Maryland.
Both men served in Congress. Both left voluntarily after six years — proof that people come and go without term limits.
The scheme is to get 34 states to demand a convention to propose term limits in Congress, and it would go straight to the states for ratification if at least 38 states agree.
Force Congress to act
The strategy is obvious: Spook Congress into proposing the amendment itself rather than risk a runaway convention that might not stop with term limits.
Members of Congress have good reasons, apart from self-interest, in opposing them.
Term limits would dumb down and weaken Congress, just as Florida’s “Eight is Enough” initiative in 1992 left Floridians with a badly broken Legislature.
DeSantis himself has “Eight is Enough” to thank for the unhealthy grasp he has had on lawmaking.
A tight circle of leaders
Instead of needing to control majorities of the 40 senators and 120 representatives, a Florida governor needs only to have a few powerful leaders in his pocket. With only eight years in most cases, members must fall in line or get out of the way.
When House Speaker Johnnie Byrd infuriated members in 2004 by saying, “They’re like sheep in a way. They’re looking for someone to tell them what to do,” it was truly a testament to term limits. It also carried a ring of truth.
In a New York Times op-ed, authors DeSantis and Trone pretended that “career politicians” are to blame for the government shutdown.
No, the reason is our excessively hyper-partisan politics.
The authors took out of context a quote from Federalist 57, which said term limits would “maintain a proper responsibility to the public.”
That essay, written by Alexander Hamilton or James Madison, did not recommend term limits, which the Constitutional Convention rejected. Instead, it emphasized the “restraint of frequent elections.”
Federalist 53 argued against extreme turnover and recognized the value of having institutional knowledge.
“The greater the proportion of new members and the less information of the bulk of the new members, the more apt they will be to fall into the snares that may be laid to them,” it said.
Today, those snares are set by lobbyists and a too-powerful presidency.
Service unto decrepitude
It takes time and experience to understand the complexities of national defense, foreign policy, health care, taxation and other responsibilities facing Congress. Nothing good can come of a constantly churning bunch of neophytes.
It’s true that some members keep getting re-elected long past their prime. The late Sen. Strom Thurmond was 102 when he retired in 2003. Sen. Diane Feinstein of California was 90 when she died in office.
A visibly regressing Sen. Mitch McConnell kept the Senate majority leadership until he was nearly 83. At 92, Iowa’s Charles Grassley chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and first went to Washington in 1974.
But if their constituents keep electing such people, who else has a right to say they shouldn’t?
Aroused voters can still change things: 48 congressional incumbents lost in 1974 in the wake of Watergate. Since 2014, Ballotpedia reports, 125 House incumbents have lost in primaries or general elections.
People come and go all the time on Capitol Hill. In Florida’s delegation alone, Rep. Bill Posey retired last year, Rep. Michael Waltz quit to work for President Trump, and Rep. Matt Gaetz left in expectation of becoming attorney general.
Sen. Marco Rubio resigned from the Senate to become Trump’s secretary of state. Sen. Rick Scott pledges to leave after two six-year terms. He was going to put Congress under term limits, too — remember? Same gimmick, same result.
The causes of Congress’ dysfunction are political gerrymandering that makes most general elections meaningless and primaries that cater to the extremes of right and left. Term limits are no solution. They would take a bad Congress and make it much worse.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
