Term Limits of Endearment
I had a very good conversation with U.S. Senator Dick Lugar Tuesday evening. We talked about Iraq, Afghanistan, the 2010 midterm elections and his own re-election bid.
I asked him his reaction to critics who say he’s been in office too long and what he thinks about a primary challenger? He told me he will serve until his fellow Hoosiers decide it’s time for him to do something else. And when asked about a possible primary challenger in 2010 , he said “it’s a free country and people are entitled to do what they wish.” He says he has a lot of energy left and looks forward to the race.
I bring this up, because Lugar has been in the U.S. Senate since 1976, for some people that’s too long. For me, I’ve always believed you should serve until you are no longer effective. For some politicians that means serving one-term, others that could mean a couple decades. I also think that if the voters have had enough of someone they should get together and remove that person from office. It has been done before, just ask Lisa Murkowski, Robert Bennett and Arlan Specter. Each was an incumbent and each lost. Granted it was a primary, but they still lost.
Of course critics would say the above examples are the exception, not the rule. I will freely admit incumbency always brings a certain amount of inherent advantages. However, at the end of the day, it’s the votes that count. I think we can make voting more competitive by eliminating blatant gerrymandering and the creation of districts that look like a Rorschach test. We can also neutralize some of the power of entrenched incumbency by putting term limits on committee assignments. Just because you should be allowed to serve until you die, doesn’t mean you can keep the same spot in perpetuity.
Of course, if people would get off their rear ends and exercise their civic duties and stay engaged in the process, this discussion wouldn’t be necessary.
