Term Limits: They Also Limit Results

Let’s hear it for hypocrisy. And be grateful for gridlock. Last week they served the nation well.

Conservative activists and pundits fumed when the U.S. Senate failed to shut off a filibuster and vote on proposed term limits for Congress. Polls show term limits are red meat for a cynical public. Voters have foisted them on legislatures in 20 states, including California. They’re a Republican battle cry, part of the formerly sacred “contract with America.”

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole says he now supports term limits. But he admits to being only “lukewarm to the idea,” having enjoyed his 35-year stint in Congress. When crunch time came in the Senate, every Republican plus five Democrats voted for cloture, but that still was two votes short. Dole just didn’t have the stomach to fight all-out, and neither had Speaker Newt Gingrich earlier in the House. They pulled their punches.

And a good thing for America, based on California’s brief experience.

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I’ve never favored term limits because, in my mind, people should have the right to vote for whomever they want. Any citizen also should have the right to run for office. Let the voters decide. I don’t even like a term limit for the president. How many Americans would have preferred Wendell Willkie or John Nance Garner leading the nation into World War II instead of Franklin Roosevelt?

That said, if we’re to have term limits, they should at least be practical. California’s are among the most draconian anywhere: three two-year terms in the Assembly, two four-year tours in the Senate.

“When you have limits like ours, you wind up with a lot of people coming into the Legislature and a lot going out and very few in the middle where you get your leadership,” says William Hauck, a former senior aide to both--paradoxically--Gov. Pete Wilson and ex-Speaker Willie Brown.

Hauck is chairman of the California Constitution Revision Commission, which has recommended that term limits be expanded to three four-year stints in each house. “That would get us some leadership continuity and institutional memory, but still cycle people out, which the voters wanted,” Hauck says. “The present limits are just going to result in continuing chaos.”

The commission recommended four-year terms for the Assembly to reduce the number of elections. Assembly members, Hauck says, now “spend all their time raising campaign money.”

Indeed, the term-limit initiative promised in its ballot argument “to remove the grip that vested interests have over the Legislature . . . [to cut] the ties between corrupting special interest money and long-term legislators.”

The only thing that’s changed is the money now goes in bigger bundles to short-term legislators. A study by Common Cause found that freshman lawmakers raised $4.9 million in 1995, $2 million more than the previous nonelection year. These “new breed” legislators, noted the organization, “quickly learned the art of fund-raising. . . . [The interest] grip is tighter than ever.”

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The full impact of term limits--approved narrowly by voters in 1990--is just starting to hit the Assembly. In the Senate, the jolt comes next year.

The jury’s still out, but there’s a pile of negative evidence.

For one, the Assembly looks like a preschool where the moppets play musical chairs and prepare for higher office. This year, roughly one-fourth of the house is running for the Senate or Congress. During this legislative session, there have been five special elections to fill seats vacated by antsy lawmakers moving mid-term to another office.

All that distracts from legislating.

Also, remember this ballot argument? “Proposition 140 will bring new ideas to Sacramento.” Says Democratic consultant Richie Ross: “Well, we’re waiting. Not having an eight-hour work day is a new idea? Having people carry loaded guns under their jackets? That looks like Wyatt Earp.”

But the biggest problem with the short-termers, Ross points out, is that “they don’t know what it is they don’t know.”

About the time these lawmakers develop legislative skills and are knowledgeable about complex issues, they’re being booted out the door. As Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) last week told a business conference: “This is not brain surgery, but you can’t figure it out in one afternoon. It takes time.”

“Proposition 140 was a dumb idea,” asserts Sen. Bill Leonard (R-San Bernardino), an Assembly candidate and one of the rare Republicans to oppose term limits publicly. “The best way for voters to throw the bums out is to judge the candidates.”

Congress would be wise to watch the states--these laboratories of democracy--experiment with term limits for a while. A long while.