So, yesterday I slogged about why I hadn't slogged about the Massachusetts Senate race and its potential impact on HCR, Obama's presidency, and the orbit of the earth around the sun: Burn-out at a system which is broken. I promised to make a liberal/progressive case for term limits for Federal office-holders, and that appears after the jump. Those who think I'm just a whiner, please go see Xanadu or something.

Republicans wanted—or said they wanted, when the Dems had reliable control over the House back in the day—term limits in order to rein in Federal power. Their hypocrisy was palpable, as the vast majority of pols elected on a platform including self-imposed term limits continued to run for re-election, and no actual attempts were made to create real term limits on the Federal level. Constitutional Amendments are a bitch, and that's what this would require.

And I have no expectation that it will happen, but being an American I have a slight tendency towards Utopian idealism, so here's my idealist rationale for term limits of 4 terms for Representatives and two for Senators.

Besides the fact that if eight years/two terms is enough for a President (though the R's woulda loved having Eisenhower or Reagan, and the D's Clinton, get a third term) it oughta be enough for a Rep or a Senator, term limits would help make lawmakers more likely to the right thing for the country rather than the right thing for re-election. And to those who point out that Elections are Term Limits, consider the gerrymandering and other factors that favor incumbents.

When politicians are primarily motivated by getting re-elected, they have every motive to cave in to media bullshit, loud minority opinions, and generally not get things done. If politicians knew going in that they had 8 or 12 years at most in their jobs, and they were presented with tough choices (public option or not? Fund a crazy pre-emptive war or not?) the calculus of re-election would not matter as much. Final term office-holders could do what they honestly thought was right since they weren't going to be running for re-election in any case. And in their not-yet-final terms, they also would not be looking ahead to maybe being Speaker in ten or twelve years, or maybe Majority Leader someday.

The usual counter-argument (expressed in comments yesterday) is that experienced legislators are better at their jobs. In response, I cite the last roughly 18 years of experienced legislators fucking things up beyond belief (remember that even in Clinton and W's lowest moments, they were more popular than Congress). The experience that comes from being around Washington forever might not be the best thing. For the nuts and bolts of House and Senate rules and so forth, hey, that's what Aides are for. If an incoming Rep or Senator doesn't know How a Bill Becomes a Law, he or she can hire staff that do.

We'd still have a professional political class: Reps would aim to become Senators, as they do now (and there'd be some reversal on that: Senators would run for Rep positions). But even if they had a full run at each office, in 20 years, they're back home looking for another way to make a living.

Other reforms would of course make this easier: re-districting done by impartial judicial panels instead of state legislatures, full public funding of all campaigns (to eliminate the Millionaire Senator Phenomenon), and perhaps even expanding the House (set a minimum population number for a Rep—the population of the smallest state—and as the national population as a whole grows, add more reps where the people are, instead of swapping the 435 around as population shifts). This last would slightly balance the fact that the Senate gives proportionally more representation to fewer people, allowing, as Gail Collins recently pointed out, the Senators of 10 percent of the population to stop HCR.

But the reason I'm despairing is that this will NEVER happen. Whenever a political class has every motivation to maintain the status quo, it will do so. Unless the Democrats get a spine implant, the Republicans will continue to derail and distract, and then when they're back in power, they'll continue to fuck this country up even more than spineless Dems do. If we're bankrupt in a decade or two, then perhaps real systemic change will take place, but I won't be holding my breath.

Neither will I completely opt out. In the hopes of keeping Illinois a two-D Senator state, I'll be voting on February 2 for the one Democrat who can run against Mark Kirk and not be tarred with the Dirty Chicago Obama Politics Brush (David Hoffman, former Inspector General, a city watchdog on Chicago city government—forced out of the position for doing it too well by Mayor Daley. . . a great credential if you ask me). And I'll read the papers. But I'm not going to invest a lot of intellectual energy or emotion anymore. It's just too much.