LETTERS: END RUN ON TERM LIMITS

To the editor:

I got such a hoot from something I read in the Oct. 10 Southeast Missourian. It is part of an election-connected legal advertisement regarding Amendment 9, the term-limits initiative. Missouri law very probably requires timely publication of plebiscite questions, be they sober or silly.

The state purpose of Amendment 9 is to get the so-called Term Limits Amendment adopted into the U.S. Constitution. To this end, it toothlessly mandates how the Missouri delegation to Congress will vote on this issue. It also mandates the labeling, on all election ballots, of Missourians who run for election to the U.S. House or Senate -- if, in the case of incumbents, they fail to do everything short of holding their breath and stamping their feet to get the amendment passed, or if, in the case of non-incumbents, they fail to take the pledge to do so in Congress. Sounds like a temperance meeting, doesn't it?

If you Missourians don't look out, this monstrosity will be added to your Missouri Constitution. The fact that it has an automatic repeal, which kicks in when and if the Term Limits Amendment is ever adopted in the U.S. Constitution, doesn't mean a think with regard to the retention of its text. The last time I looked, the U.S. Constitution still carried references to letters or marque, slavery, the prohibition of demon rum, election of U.S. senators by state legislatures etc.

The passage of Amendment 9 would make Missourians a laughing stock when word of its super-paternalistic provisions becomes general knowledge. Are Missourians to be perceived as so unmotivated that they do not even make an attempt to determine a candidate's positions on various issues until they hit the voting booth? This gives an entirely new meaning to the heretofore respected phrase, "Show me."

I called the mandate toothless, and I predict that court challenges to that provision would succeed wildly. Representatives and senators do not answer to the mandate of an entire state, but only to its voters on Election Day. I am certain that no court would see fit to change that.

In the final analysis, term limits are a way for political tendencies that cannot prevail at the ballot box to do an end run around the desire of a state or district to retain its favorite legislator if they choose to do so. If this idea wins the day, U.S. voters will have lost a precious freedom. Of course, I have never viewed U.S. conservatism as a force of freedom. Term limits is of a piece with their insatiable desire to control, and it deserves to be defeated.

DONN S. MILLER

Tamms, Ill.