CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS: TERM LIMITS; IN FAVOR

Peter Kinder is candidate for the 27th District seat of the Missouri Senate.

No movement in American history is a more genuine expression of grassroots activism than the term limits prairie fire. Opposed by elite opinion within and without the prestige media, and by such avatars of ~civic religion as the League of Women Voters, opposition reaches a fever pitch on the third floor of the state capitol in Jefferson City, and within the District of Columbia on Capitol Hill. Which is fine. The only folks who can be found on the other side are ordinary Americans by the millions, who are registering their disgust with business as usual in the only way they know how.

Term limits are a profoundly optimistic statement about people and our capacity for self-government. The movement for limited terms represents a small "d" democratic faith in the people to conduct the business of government. We are right to trust that impulse, which has deep roots in the early history of America. Listen to an excerpt from "Cleaning House: America's Campaign for Term Limits" by Wall Street Journal editorialist John Fund and former Congressman James Coyne:

"Term limits were a part of the nation's first governing document, the Articles of Confederation, but were left out of the Constitution after some members in 1784 fought `tooth and toenail' and refused to vacate their seats. Nonetheless, self-imposed limits were backed by Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln and were long a part of America's public-service ethic; members of Congress routinely went home after two or three terms. That's why the voluntary service limitations of the past must now be codified."

Arguments for term limits abound and given the assorted scandals and farces of the U.S. Congress are especially abundant at the federal level. Consider just two congressional careerists, each a living, breathing walking argument for term limits.

Rep. Jamie Whitten of Mississippi came to Congress in 1941, six months before Pearl Harbor. Fifty-one years later he wields awesome power over the nation's fiscal affairs as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, which he has chaired now for decades. His Senate counterpart is West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, who entered the Senate in the Democratic landslide of 1958 and has reigned ever since, having served in the powerful posts of majority leader and Appropriations Committee chairman. Whitten has long held a stranglehold on money bills, especially for agricultural and water projects. Byrd has looted billions from the federal treasury for his poor state and has threatened to move entire departments of the federal government to its steep Appalachian mountainsides. Is this the spirit of public service the Founders thought essential?~

Let's list several of the arguments against~ term limits and confront them head-on.

Limiting legislative~~ terms will increase the power of the unelected: legislative staff, lobbyists and bureaucrats. Is this tr~ue? Proponents of this widely heard argument h~ave only one hurdle to cross. Why is it that staffers, lobbyists and bureaucrat~~s are almost universally oppos~d to limiting terms? Would they oppose a measure that will diminish their power and influence? The answer is "no." The reform we need is to bust up the coz~y little inside game that's been going on between the lobbyists, the bureaucrats, ~the career legislators and their staffers. The near universal opposition of these ~four groups to this reform is what gives their game away.

Government in the modern age is highly specialized and enormously complex; amateurs will be hopelessly lost in a governmental maze that can be effectively maneuvered only by legislative careerists who spend long years in office, mastering details and making connections. This argument begs another question: Is the fact that career politicians have created a gargantuan bureaucracy an argument for keeping them in office to pull its levers?

Our governing elite class of professional politicians wants us to believe that ordinary citizens cannot "play this game" without years of experience. They seem genuinely unaware of the arrogance they betray in making this argument. Better to return them to the private sector, to see how things look from the taxpaying side, and let a business person, teacher or union member have a chance at dealing with the bureaucracy.

Limiting legislative terms will severely narrow the electorate's choice and deprive them of the services of good and talented legislators. It must be conceded there is some validity to this argument. Daniel Webster would have been knocked out by term limits, but so would today's entrenched incumbents, so many of whom have abused their power and "acquired the habits of the place" in James Madison's neatly phrased warning against lifetime legislators.

"Term limits are good for presidents, they're good for governors and they're even better for a bunch of career politicans in the Congress and state legislatures, who raise their own salaries and write their own election laws," says Governor John Ashcroft.

Amen. And on November 3, when Missouri voters enact term limits along with more than a dozen other states, we'll be taking a big step toward restoring the constitutional republic our Founders gave us 200 years ago.