I originally wrote this as part of a facebook comment thread, but wanted to put it in a blog post since it's something I feel strongly about. I'm amazed at how great a job our founding fathers did at forming our government and how it works. However, I don't think they envisioned a time when the majority of people either didn't vote or didn't really pay attention to whom they were voting for and why.
I've been hearing a lot of people pushing for term limits in recent years, but I don't think that's the best answer.
An educated public that actually votes is the answer. Term limits just makes more people apathetic -- doesn't matter who gets elected, they'll be gone soon.
Term limits does not prevent the phenomenon of career politicians. If people continue to vote for them, they'll find offices to run for. Let's say state legislatures allowed a total of 12 years, state Governorship was limited to 2 terms, Senate was 2 terms and Congress was 6 terms, then one person could be in office for 40 years, which I would considered a career. And then if they managed to get VP for another 8 years and President for 8 more years, that's a total of 56 years! And that's not counting any time as a Mayor or city council person. Term limits simply does not solve the problem. If they're not a good representative and the educated voting public keeps them accountable, then they might be in office for 2 or 4 years, if at all. That's the only logical solution. Pushing for term limits is easy, but if you stop and think about it, it just doesn't make sense.
Why wait for term limits to get rid of a bad politician when they can be gone at the next election?!?
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