Term Limits

[SHRED]

They are terrible.
We all ready have term limits. It's called vote them out!

The problem runs deeper than "term limits".
Corporate lobbyists don't have "term limits". They become seasoned professionals at twisting the arms of our representatives. They love term limits because it affords them "fresh" politicians who do not play the game as well.
The corporate world backs and gives money to term limit drives across the nation. They love them. We lose.

The real answer is Publically funded elections. A set amount for each candidate. This would force each party to look for the best and brightest not the wealthiest or best "connected".

[Maine Mary]

1. I agree with everything you said

:-)

[welshTerrier2]

2. the wrong answer to the right question

term limits seek to address the problem of entrenched power ... they seek to make government more responsive to the voters by ensuring that the best known and most powerful cannot automatically retain their seats in the Congress ...

and there is indeed a problem to be addressed ... incumbents have a huge advantage over challengers ... with all the problems the country has and with the high levels of dissatisfaction voters say they have, something is clearly wrong with a process that doesn't favor giving challengers a better chance ...

and the problem ultimately comes down to money and media access ... even without considering issues like fraudulent voting machines and biased political hacks being put in charge of overseeing the fairness of elections, our electoral process is badly in need of reform ... candidates, including minor party candidates, need to compete on a much more level playing field ...

i would like to outlaw the hiring of advertising firms and media consultants ... the goal is to get down to a "talking head" syndrome ... i want all candidates to come before the people and tell their story and share their ideas ... that's it ... that's the campaign ... speeches, debates, public appearances ... no music, no flags waving, no holding up cute, fat little babies ... if we allow our candidates to build images and we vote based on images rather than on their ideas and who they really are, we have no real democracy ... voters need to know the truth and allowing media-created deceptions makes it impossible to know the truth ...

the problem with term limits is the cliched phrase that they throw the baby out with the bathwater ... our goal should be to create a system that lets voters truly understand the candidates, retain the best candidates and toss out the bumbs ... term limits tosses out everyone and does nothing to repair the underlying problem of a deceived electorate ...

to ask the question about how we can have better elections with a better informed electorate so that we don't end up with bad people getting elected over and over and over is a good question to ask ... but term limits should not be the answer to that question ...

[Maine Mary]

3. I believe the original poster

feels the same way...and so do I. We have term limits on our state level elections here in Maine and it's been a disaster.

[welshTerrier2]

4. i agree ...

i'm in full agreement with the BP (and with you) ...

i just wanted to suggest some alternative remedies to the electoral problems term limits were trying to address ...