Legislative Gridlock: Right Blame, but Wrong Answer : Term limits: A ceiling for lawmakers won’t cure the problem. A better way would be to elect the chief executive before voting for legislators.

In states where voter initiatives can enact laws and constitutional amendments, limits on political longevity are now the rage. A 12-year limit on legislative office has been approved by the voters of Oklahoma, and a similar limit is on the Colorado ballot in November. In California voters will have a choice between eight- and 12-year limits for state senators and six- and 12-year limits for members of the Assembly. If these proposals are adopted, we can expect similar efforts to limit federal terms of office.

Term-limit proposals reflect a justified public reaction to the disappointing outcome of government and the ability of incumbent elected officials to avoid responsibility for these outcomes and get themselves reelected. But while the public has the problem right, term limits are the wrong solution.

First, term limits for state office can be achieved only by a state constitutional amendment, and term limits for federal office can be achieved only by a federal constitutional amendment. A state constitutional amendment cannot limit the terms of the members it sends to the federal House and Senate. And a federal constitutional amendment, of course, is extraordinarily difficult to achieve, since it requires passage by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress and ratification by 38 of the 50 states.

Second, term limits would do little to correct the problem at which they are aimed--the ability of individual incumbents to get themselves reelected while avoiding accountability for the governmental decisions they collectively make. They have this “Teflon” ability because so many voters no longer choose on the basis of party--they vote for the individual they prefer regardless of party.

One-third of all voters now characterize themselves as independent, rather than Republican or Democratic. In most recent national elections and in more than half the states, we now elect a divided government. We elect one party’s candidate to be President or governor, and a majority of the other party’s candidates to one or both houses of the legislature.

This is a polar shift from the first 150 years of our history as a nation; in 35 out of 38 presidential elections from 1796 through 1948, the party winning the White House also won majority control of both houses of Congress. In five of the last of the six presidential elections, the opposite has occurred. To paraphrase Brutus in William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”: “The fault, dear voters, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are ticket-splitters.”

When we had one party in control of both the executive and the legislature, the voters knew whom to praise or blame for the outcomes of government. If government policies succeeded, the majority party’s candidates were reelected; if government policies failed, a majority of the opposition party was elected to replace them.

But when we have divided government, accountability is diffused, and almost every incumbent gets reelected. Polls consistently show that voters have a low opinion of Congress and the state legislatures, but a high opinion of the incumbents for their district.

Term limits might force some incumbents out of office, but unless voters elect the candidates of the same party to be chief executive and to the majority of the seats in both legislative houses, divided government will continue, along with the deadlock and disillusionment that divided government usually produces. For example, every single one of the 11 postwar budget deficits exceeding 3% of gross national product has occurred during a period of divided government.

Far better than term limits would be a simple federal or state statute setting the date for electing the President or governor four weeks before the date for electing the Legislature. Once we know which party’s candidate we have elected as chief executive, the winner could ask the voting public to elect a majority of the same party’s candidates to the Legislature, so that the winner’s program could be carried out.

This is essentially what happened in France, where President Francois Mitterrand, upon his election and reelection seven years later, called new elections for the Assembly and persuaded the voters to change an opposition majority into a majority of his own party and its allies. While American voters might still be perverse or indifferent enough to elect a majority of the other party’s candidates to the Legislature, we would at least have to think about the consequences before doing so.