Philip Blumel: The oldest Senate in History.
[music]Philip Blumel: Hi, I’m Philip Blumel. Welcome to No Uncertain Terms, the official podcast of the Term Limits Movement for the week of June 14th, 2021.
Stacey Selleck: Your sanctuary from partisan politics.
Philip Blumel: Senator Dianne Feinstein of California is 88. Senator Charles Grassley, 87, Richard Shelby, 87, James Inhofe, 86, Pat Leahy, 81. People are living longer and the average age is rising in many industries as older Americans are staying active longer. That’s a good thing. But in politics, this trend is reaching extremes, and the reasons aren’t limited to better healthcare or eating more salad. The Washington Post asked US Term Limits Executive Director, Nick Tomboulides, about this phenomena last week, and we’ll do the same today. Hey, Nick.
Philip Blumel: Alright. So I have a copy of this article that appeared in the Washington Post on June 2nd, and they’re talking about how we have the oldest US Senate in history, and they ask him uncomfortable questions about what that means. First of all, I’d like to ask the question, “How did we get here? Why do we have the oldest Senate in history?” And this is a problem, of course plaguing the House, as well.
Nick Tomboulides: Well, I have always identified this as a problem with the power of incumbency, the fact that not only are senior members of Congress able to avail themselves of so many advantages to stay in power, but there are also advantages that play to the voter’s self-interest from time to time in a very unfair way, such as the dilemma. If I vote out my very senior and potentially decrepit member of Congress, will my district lose access to federal resources? Will we lose out on federal grants? Will my member have to step down from a committee and restart at the back of the line ’cause Washington’s based on a seniority system.
Philip Blumel: Sure. When your entrenched incumbent leaves, then they’re replaced by a freshman.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah.
Philip Blumel: Necessarily.
Nick Tomboulides: And so I think we got to this point because federal politics and Congress have basically become a game of chicken between these careerist politicians and their own voters, who would really like to give all of them the pink slip, but can’t because they’re so trapped by a broken system.
Philip Blumel: Right, and of course, as we’ve talked about many times on the podcast, when you have an entrenched incumbency like this that basically automatically win elections, money is just pouring in, it chases away serious competition, too. There’s a long list of reasons why these elder members of the Senate can’t lose elections and keep running again. And it really has nothing to do with eating wheatgerm or jogging.
Nick Tomboulides: Are you an incumbent? Do you have a pulse? Congratulations, you’ve been re-elected.
Philip Blumel: That’s it. I think one of the classic cases of this is South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond, right, ’cause he retired at age 100 from the US Senate. He was in that body for 48 years, and at the end, everybody knew this, that basically his staff did everything for him, except for maybe just that push the button to vote on the Senate floor. He retired and he died a couple of months later.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah. We don’t want Congress to look like Weekend at Bernie’s. They were doing everything for him, they were propping him up.
Philip Blumel: Yeah.
Nick Tomboulides: And it’s not like he’s gonna be the last one. Congress is shattering records and not in a good way. This is the oldest Senate in American history. Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Grassley turn 88 this year. Richard Shelby…
Philip Blumel: Yeah.
Nick Tomboulides: Is…
Philip Blumel: Yeah.
Nick Tomboulides: 87, James Inhofe…
Philip Blumel: Yeah.
Nick Tomboulides: 86, Pat Leahy, 81. And so people are aware now this is the oldest Senate ever, and it’s time for a discussion on whether that’s a problem, and if so, what solutions are available.
Philip Blumel: Yeah, I have some ideas about solutions. One thing I wanna say also that magnifies this problem is that you just mentioned some of the oldest people in the Senate, you also mentioned a lot of leadership in the Senate, and that’s really the issue because the average age in the Senate, it’s not that high. It’s like 64. That average is brought down by the fact there’s some couple of young members in there, but the main issue is that because it’s based on a seniority system, that these older members are the ones that are actually running the show. They run all the committees, and so the problem is worse than what the average might tell you. It’s really told more by the examples that you gave of Grassley and Feinstein and the others.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah, exactly right. It won’t matter if from time to time, a young enterprising person with fresh ideas can enter the system. The question we have is, “Are good ideas blocked by this upper crust of senior career politicians whose power is concentrated on these key committees?” And obviously, the answer is yes, and that is a major part of why hardly anything constructive can get done in Washington.
Philip Blumel: Right. Now, back to the issue of possible solutions. [chuckle] In Canada, they have, actually have not a term limit, but a age limit for members of the Senate in Canada. I think it’s age 65.
Scott Tillman: Hi, this Scott Tillman, the National Field Director with US Term Limits. This January, we found out that there’s a man who is walking across the country for Term Limits. Timothy Israel, who goes by Izzy, is walking across the country. And he started down in South Florida, and he plans to end up in Northwest Washington State. We contacted Izzy and asked him to walk a couple of states for us. He graciously agreed to help us, and he is bouncing off his original path and doing a couple of side trips through states where the legislatures are considering Term Limits resolutions. Izzy has walked over 1500 miles. Currently, he’s walking up through North Carolina to bring attention to the Term Limits resolution that the state legislature is considering. The North Carolina House already passed the resolution, but the North Carolina Senate has not. If you have contacts in North Carolina, please reach out to us on our North Carolina Facebook page, and we will get you the information so that they can encourage their senator to take up the resolution and pass it.
Scott Tillman: Izzy’s walk has been featured in dozens of articles and segments and different media publications, including online, print, and broadcast media. Izzy can use our help, and if you’re able, he can use your help too. Please go to his website and donate. Go to whereisizzy.com, and you’ll be directed to Izzy’s donation page. All donations will go to him personally and help him to continue his walk for Term Limits. You could also find his page by going to termlimits.com and selecting Izzy from the dropdown menu of ‘Our News’ tab. It will require citizens standing up and taking action all over our country to pass Term Limits. Please, if you’re able, pitch in to help Izzy today.
Philip Blumel: In this article, you, Nick Tomboulides, were talking about the solution, Term Limits.
Nick Tomboulides: Roxanne Roberts, the author, she is a super sharp reporter with The Washington Post. She was asking, she was trying to be objective, is age and cognitive decline a problem in Congress, and if it’s a problem, what are the solutions? We came up as part of the solutions category. Of course, Term Limits would be a silver bullet to address the issue of age and cognitive decline in Congress here, but I’m glad this reporter, Ms. Roberts, was willing to tackle this ’cause this is a topic of great importance but not every reporter has the guts to get into it, because they’re worried they might offend somebody with the age question, but this was handled so well and she did represent both sides, and the title of the article was, “Senate is the oldest in American history. Should we do anything about it?”
Philip Blumel: My favorite quote by you is when she talks about how senior senators’ age can become painfully obvious when they’re talking about things like the Internet and social media, and things they actually don’t know anything about, and you say, “We actually have a joke around here. We don’t call them congressional hearings anymore. We call them commercials for Term Limits.” That’s perfect.
Nick Tomboulides: The problem is they’re so long and droning that they become infomercials for Term Limits after a while.
[chuckle]Philip Blumel: You are right, actually. [chuckle]
Nick Tomboulides: But, yeah, we’ll take that. You go on Twitter during a congressional hearing and you see the comments. People always post the pictures of Statler and Waldorf, those two Muppets, those two old guy Muppets in the balcony who are complaining about everything, and that’s what Congress has become, and the lack of Term Limits is a major factor. Right before we started recording this, I did a comparison between the US Senate and the Florida State Senate. The US Senate has no Term Limits. The Florida State Senate is a body that has Term Limits. And what I found was… No one in the Florida Senate is 80, not a single member. There are several members in their 70s, but they’re all mainly serving in their final term right now and that you can contrast that with the US Senate, where you have five members who are over 80, all of whom are in very critical positions of power and you have two who are closely approaching 90. That’s gotta worry you and the argument isn’t that the elderly should have no role in government, it’s that they shouldn’t be overrepresented and you shouldn’t have a small circle of power brokers calling most of the shots in DC.
Philip Blumel: And it has to be recognized that life is what it is and most people are not gonna be 100% at age 90, and there’s always gonna be exceptions. But, generally speaking, that is not the case. And it’s certainly not the case in the US Senate, and that’s not why these people are being re-elected and re-elected, it’s because of the system and because of the entrenched incumbency. We know they’re not operating 100%. You know the issues, and we talked about it on the podcast a couple months ago about Dianne Feinstein in California. She’s being very forgetful asking the same question twice, etcetera.
Philip Blumel: And we know that Senate Majority Leader, Charles Schumer. This is, of course, an ally, had a serious talk with Feinstein, and as a result, she gave up her seat as the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee in November. And Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, he blurted out recently that if Dianne Feinstein can’t make it through her term, then he’s ready to replace her with a new senator until another election be held. They recognize that Dianne Feinstein, a friend and ally and someone whose served him well over the years, is simply not doing so anymore.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah, and Feinstein was a focus of this article. Interestingly, the reporter, Roxanne Roberts, was not aware prior to her interview with me that both, Barack Obama and Harry Truman, had both made statements in favor of Term Limits, but, it’s funny, we tip-toe around this issue of age and cognitive decline, and when you read the quote from Harry Truman about Term Limits, he didn’t tip-toe at all. He did not pull any punches. First, he said seniority and senility are both terrible legislative diseases and that’s why we need Term Limits, but he also said, this is an amazing quote, “The appropriations committees of the House and Senate are aged and decrepit men, and if they think at all, they think backwards.” [chuckle] He was not holding back there, and I don’t think we should either in addressing this issue.
Philip Blumel: I hate to end this on a sad note, but Senator Feinstein has filed papers with the Federal Election Commission for a 2024 reelection bid.
Nick Tomboulides: Oh my God.
Philip Blumel: [chuckle] It’s true. Enough said.
[music]Philip Blumel: George Will is a political commentator and author who writes regular columns for The Washington Post and provides commentary for NBC News and MSNBC. In 1986, The Wall Street Journal called him “Perhaps the most powerful journalist in America.” He won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1977. Will is also the author of one of the most thoughtful books ever written about the issue of Term Limits. It’s titled, “Restoration: Congress, Term Limits, and the Recovery of Deliberative Democracy,” published in 1992. In this talk, recorded at Harvard’s Kennedy School Institute of Politics, shortly after the book was published, Will makes his case for Term Limits. Keep in mind, in November of that year, voters in 14 states imposed Term Limits on their congressional delegations at the ballot box, heady times for the Term Limits Movement.
[applause]George Will: Thank you very much. Let me begin with a preemptive apology. If I’m even less coherent than usual, it’s because I’ve just come from Seattle, where Tom Foley is suing the people of the State of Washington for having had the impertinence of voting for Term Limits. He’s suing them in the name of democracy. [laughter] It is good to be back here in this forum, I did indeed commit a lecture here, that became a book sold by the dozens, some of you may have… [laughter] Its remaindered in better book stores everywhere. And it is also true that I was once, a college professor, although I don’t like to have that sort of flaunted. [laughter] I remember the night that Jim Buckley, my friend Jim Buckley, won renomination in 1976, for the Conservative and Republican Party, to be senator from New York, and my friend, Pat Moynihan won that Democratic nomination. And over at Buckley’s headquarters, Buckley said, “I look forward to debating with Professor Moynihan, who I’m sure, will run the kind of campaign we would expect of a Harvard professor.” And then back over at Moynihan’s headquarters, a journalist said, “Pat, Jim Buckley’s referring to you as professor Moynihan,” Pat drew up to his full height and said, “Oh, the mud slinging has begun.” [laughter]
George Will: Every sermon needs a text, and well, my text will come from the national religion of baseball. The Orioles, on whose board of directors I sit, used to have a manager named Earl Weaver, a feisty, Napoleonic little man, about 5″4, who was the scourge of American League Umpires, he would come barreling out of the dugout and in high dudgeon and he’d stick his nose in the chest of a much larger umpire and shout at the top of his lungs, “Are you gonna get any better, or is this it?” [laughter] The American people have asked that about their government and have decided that there is much room for improvement, and that one of the ways to do that, is Term Limits. I am convinced that this, the most vital and broad-based mass movement in the country since the Civil Rights Movement, and in some ways a continuation of the spirit, is going to prevail.
George Will: I believe that of all the voting done in 1992, the voting for president was the 15th most important voting. The 14 more important votes were in the 14 states for the political class trials, that might was unable to prevent people from voting on Term Limits. In all 14 states, they passed. In 13 to 14 states, Term Limits got more votes than Bill Clinton got. In 14 states, Term Limits got more votes than Ross Perot in 50 states. If American history tells us anything clearly, it is that when the American people, by a large majority, wants something intensely and protractedly, they get it, and this looks to me like a cause that is going to succeed. As well, it should, as an amendment to the Madisonian system, because it is, as I indicated in the title of these remarks, a Madisonian change, and that it aims to modify surgically, the structure of incentives, governing behavior in public life, to change the incentives people have for entering public life and therefore, the incentives they have for behaving in one way or another in public life.
George Will: Now, I say at the outset that I am a Conservative who came to my support of Term Limits reluctantly and indeed after having been rather ardently opposed to Term Limits. And there are four good reasons why Conservatives particularly, should be skeptical of Term Limits. The first is that Conservatives believe that almost all improvements make matters worse, that’s why we are Conservatives. [laughter] And the second is the doctrine of unintended consequences, which you’re all familiar with it, being that the unintended consequences are often diametrically opposed to and much larger than the intended consequences of any social action. The third is that it’s a curious reform, because you know going in, that one of the absolutely certain results of it, will be deplorable, and that is the ending of some very great careers. My book on Term Limits is devoted to two of my best friends and two of the best senators, Jack Danforth, and Pat Moynihan, both of which would be gone from Washington already, were Term Limits to prevail.
George Will: If you enter my office in Washington, you’ll see two photographs and one bust of Scoop Jackson, one of the few heroes I’ve had in Washington. It is the case that not all long careers are great, but most great careers are long and this will limit long careers. And the fourth reason to be skeptical about Term Limits, is that the Founding Fathers didn’t oath them, and had I been among the Founding Fathers, I would not have, because founding… ‘Cause Term Limits are indeed an excision from the sphere of free choice, and the good reason for doing that, did not exist then, it does now. The difference is the emergence and nature of the modern state. When the Founding Fathers were riding and when walking [0:17:52.2] ____ along the river, a city where pigs grazed in Pennsylvania Avenue as recently… As late as the coming of Abraham Lincoln as president, the idea that anyone would want to make a long career in an un-air-conditioned city, was preposterous, facially, and indeed few people did.
George Will: Back in the Jeffersonian era, politics, for those who wanted to make a career of it, was very much a matter of musical chairs, and the idea of, say, of going from the Congress to the Virginia State Legislature, by no means appeared to Virginians, for example, as a step down. What began to change was, of course, what changed everything in American life, which was the Civil War, which gave us, A, consolidated for political reasons, power in Washington and gave an enormous impetus to the growth of industrial capitalism and the growth of the intervention of state. After the Civil War, of course, the great source of revenue for the federal government was the tariff, and the tariff was, in the language of today’s politics, a twofer. To impose a tariff was to do a favor to one group, and then to spend the money raised by the tariff, was to do a favor for another group. It was the beginning of a great mechanism, by which the machinery of the federal government could be turned to the advantage of incumbency.
George Will: The work of the intervention of the state went up, the sessions got longer. Now, I believe that what has happened in this century is an imbalance in the natural constitution. We have seen the presidency grow… Swell, really, to attain a role in American life at the expense of Congress that I would like to redress and I think Term Limits will redress. One of the peculiarities of my particular approach to Term Limits, is that I wanted not to punish Congress, but I want it to restore Congress to its rightful place as the first branch of government.
George Will: The modern presidency is not an institution that can safely be relied upon. The President as a permanent presence in the American public mind is a modern invention. Some say, it began with a specific piece of legislation. Something presidents never did before when he did so for the Hepburn Act regulating railroads, which he thought was a regime level question. But it was Woodrow Wilson, who Professor Mansfield rightly identifies, as the first President to be critical of the Founding Fathers who really gave a theory to the Teddy Roosevelt’s practice in inflating the Presidency.
George Will: He gave the theory to the progressives and to the new dealers. The theory that what the Founding Fathers intended was a mistake in many ways. It was Woodrow Wilson who said that a president exists to en-spirit the country, to be a kind of constant moral tutor and to interpret… His word… To interpret what the people really want and would say they wanted if they were articulate enough and conscious enough of what they wanted.
George Will: This led to a kind of increased plebiscitory nature of American politics surrounding the presidency. It has achieved the most grotesque form in recent years, in the watery Caesarism of Ross Perot. But it is a constant tendency in American politics now. That the president is a repository of the constant will of the American people, constantly shaping and being shaped by public opinion. The problem with this as a motor for the American government and as an anchor for our public life is that the presidency is an inherently weak office. By inherently, I mean, constitutionally.
George Will: There’s precious little a president can do on his own other than move the country by the power of his rhetoric. And by moving the country control Congress. The problem with that is that the presidency therefore is a hostage to the attributes of its current occupant. Think, by the way… I’ll give you an example. Think that the prime-ministership of Great Britain was pretty much the same, and its power and function under Clement Attlee or Margaret Thatcher, two vastly different people. But the presidency was a different institution under Jimmy Carter in the summer of 1979 and Ronald Reagan in the summer of 1981, just two years difference.
George Will: What we have seen therefore, is it seems to me, reasons to doubt whether we can healthily function as a country with Congress functioning the way it is. Congress viewed by an increasingly dyspeptic public as an illegitimate institution, or a Congress needing restored. That was the… Really the beginning of my slow epiphany on this subject. I did… However… I can give you a autobiography here. I was in front of a group one day. I forgot where it was. And someone said, “What do you think of Term Limits?” And I gave the stock Washington answer and I said, “If we had Term Limits, we wouldn’t have seasoned professionals in Washington. And if we didn’t have seasoned professionals, we wouldn’t have the good government we’ve got.”
[laughter]George Will: Which got me to thinking that of course, the opposite of the word professional is amateur, and amateur comes from the French word to love. And it means someone who does something for the love of it. Which is an acceptable if eccentric motive even in Washington. That was the beginning… Just listening to my own language was the beginning of my change. I was also watched and was quite struck by the campaign in California for Proposition 140. Their Term Limits measure for their state legislature and for their congressmen.
George Will: I was struck in the state legislative campaign for Term Limits, that something I and others had predicted turned to be exactly wrong. It was said that the lawyers and lobbyists comprising the parasite class that surrounds any modern state, seeking to use… Doing what the economists call transfer seeking… Seeking to ban public power for private advantages, that they would relish terms limits. We were told because they would run roughshod over the rookies, the poor innocents who would come in.
George Will: But when push came to shove, as it has a way of doing in California, the lawyers and lobbyists came out of the wood work en masse unanimously and in force happily futilely in support of the opponents of Term Limits because they are quite comfortable with the long-established relationships they now have with the well-regulated, rented and house broken political class with which they cooperate comfortably in exchange for crucial political support.
George Will: Then I noticed… And noticed… It’s like noticing the Grand Canyon, the connection… The connection between the inability of the federal government to perform the first function of government, which is to write a reasonable budget… In short, the deficit and careerism. The deficit is for Republicans and Democrats alike. And they’re not a dime’s worth of… Well, maybe a dime but not 20 cents worth of difference between them on this. The deficit is the principal instrument of incumbent advantage because it is the defeat that enables a political class in Washington to give the American people a dollars worth with the government and charge them 76 cents for it. It is the principal instrument by which politics is made easy by certain choices being evaded.
George Will: And then there was something I’d already referred to which is the nature of the modern presidency. I’m convinced that the presidency has achieved its peculiar role because of an accident. That two things arrived almost simultaneously in the late ’40s, the Cold War and television. The Cold War made the president the center of a non-stop 24-hour a day, year-round melodrama. In a hair-trigger world, high tension world, with Soviet missiles eight minutes away on submarines off North Carolina, with the military aide carrying the satchel with the launch codes behind the President, wherever he went.
George Will: The president became the focus of an abnormal and inherently unhealthy obsession on the part of the American people, deepened by television. Which exists to… Which being slave to a superficial news gathering instrument, a camera must personalize politics, and the President suited that need terrifically. In one of the nice carom shots of American history… Or of world history really… The crumbling of the Berlin Wall has begun to bring the presidency back down to human scale, and to make the revival of Congress much more possible than it recently has been. But in order for Congress to play the role it does, something must be done to stop what I consider, supply side politics in Washington.
George Will: By that, I refer to the process by which groups do not demand programs, thereby producing programs, but programs are developed to invent groups that will thereafter rally around them and become reliable constituencies for those who write the programs. Take two examples that are familiar and have recently, as a result of some monomania on the part of me and some others, become sort of mildly famous. The honey subsidy and the wool subsidy.
George Will: Most Americans of course, don’t have a clue that we have a wool subsidy, and would wonder why we do. And the reason we do is World War II was fought largely in wool uniforms. And shortly after the Second World War, the military confronted with the possibility of another two-front war said, “We’d better subsidize the growing of wool.” The cold war is over. Alternative fabrics have come along and the wool subsidy goes on and on. Somewhat limited as a result of recent hullabaloos, but on and on. The same reason we have a honey subsidy. During the Second World War, honey was valued as a sugar substitute and as a way of waterproofing munitions. The war is over, but the honey subsidy has two more years to run, when they say… And I don’t believe a word of it, they will phase it out. Not that the bees wouldn’t make honey even if they weren’t civil servants, but… We’re not gonna test that.
[laughter]George Will: This is what I call supply side politics… I actually… I can… Just continue this digression one minute more. So the final last straw, in my conversion on Term Limits came about 6:30 one morning in Denver. I don’t know I was there. I got up and I opened the Rocky Mountain News, I saw a headline about basketball. I had written a column about the Midnight Basketball League in Chicago… A wonderful program run entirely by the private sector. In which young at-risk inner city men aged 17 to 24, are got off the street and out of trouble and into basketball uniforms, leagues, awards, banquets, referees, the whole scene.
George Will: They play in the middle of the night. It keeps them out of trouble, good idea. I wrote a column about it, big mistake. Because in Washington, the assumption is that every good idea should be a federal program. [laughter] And what the headline said in the Rocky Mountain News was, “Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder gets federal grant for Midnight Basketball League.” At that moment, I was reading, ’cause I was gonna review it for the New York Times’ book review, a biography of Henry Clay. And I was just serendipitously at the point where Henry… Young Henry Clay fights his way out of the Kentucky wilderness and over the corduroy roads and by barge up the rivers into Washington in 1806.
George Will: And the day he arrives, Jefferson is having a spat with Congress, ’cause Congress has passed a roads bill to build a bridge over the Potomac River. And Jefferson reluctantly and against his better instincts said, “Alright, I’m gonna sign this. But I’ve looked in the constitution under the enumerated powers and nowhere does it say Congress should run around building bridges over the Potomac. And so I’ll sign it anyway, but if you’re not careful, and if you don’t mend your ways, in a 150 years, you’re gonna be subsidizing basketball in Denver.”
[laughter]George Will: Words to that effect. And I decided that Term Limits would be a rational response. Now, when I… In advocating Term Limits, I don’t want to say that Term Limits will make something straight from the crooked timber of humanity, it won’t. But I do insist, as I say, it is a Madisonian measure. It is an accommodation to human nature, and most importantly to the nature of the modern state. Do not favor Term Limits because you expect this or that particular policy outcome. Because I don’t know what the policy outcome would be. A lot of supporters of Term Limits say, “If you have Term Limits, you will reduce federal spending.”
George Will: I don’t know that that’s true, and there’s a good reason to doubt it. Because today, under Congress as currently constituted, the strongest political passion, arguably the only strong political passion in the country is taxo-phobia. And that taxo-phobia is rooted in a pandemic distrust of the motives and discretion of the Congress. Term Limits will, I think, rehabilitate Congress, and will therefore be a pre-condition, a necessary pre-condition, for ending the severe reluctance to pay taxes.
George Will: Do not support Term Limits in the anticipation of any particular predictable partisan outcome between Republicans and Democrats. The recent history of competition for open seats suggests that the Democrats will do slightly better than Republicans for open seats, for a lot of reasons. But basically, because Democrats like being in government and Republicans would rather work for IBM, which is why they are Republicans.
[laughter]George Will: The one clear… Reasonably clear effect Term Limits would have would be to increase the number of women and minorities in politics for I think, obvious reasons. As I’ve said, do not be for Term Limits because you want to punish Congress or shove it more to the periphery of American life. It will have, I think, the opposite effect, by bringing into politics, and into Congress, people who come often from established careers, to which they can return, and who therefore do not face the prospect of risk in elective defeat as personal and emotional, and vocational annihilation.
George Will: Whose identity is not tied up as most poignantly, and pathetically you see, for example, in Bob Packwood with clinging to public office. You would, I think have a less risk-averse and therefore more assertive, more decisive, bolder Congress, not least a Congress bold in standing up to the entrenched and permanent government and the bureaucracy, but most of all, most of all… And here I am diametrically opposed to most of my friends in the Term Limits movement, do not be for Term Limits in order to make Congress, as they say, more responsive.
George Will: The problem today in American life, is that Congress is far too responsive. That it’s an institution incapable of saying no. It is a finely tuned seismograph quivering to every tremor of organized appetite in the country. And the point of Term Limits, as I envision it, is to establish what Professor Mansfield calls constitutional distance between the elected and the electors. To make room, to give motives and to give emotional and psychic space for the elected to deliberate.
George Will: Now, in this sense, Term Limits is just a modern version of a very old American concern with understanding the sociology of virtue. It’s as old as Jefferson worrying about cities. It’s as old as Hamilton worrying about a landed squirearchy in the South. This is an attempt to give Republican representative institutions a certain character, a certain cast, certain attributes.
George Will: This is why, by the way, I think the litigation that began in Seattle the other day is going to establish that, in fact, states do have the constitutional power, by state action, to limit the terms of congressmen and senators. Because the courts have traditionally, for 200 years, been very deferential to many state efforts to restrict access to the ballot and to restrict and regulate candidacies in the interest of such, sometimes, competing values as political openness and political stability.
George Will: Tom Foley says, “Anything other than the three qualifications listed in the constitution is unconstitutional.” That is, you have to be a certain age, you have to be an American citizen, you have to live in the state. The state, by the way, that’s all it says. All kinds of states have laws as well as customs that say you have to live in the congressional district and the Constitution doesn’t have a word in it about congressional districts. When Tom Foley runs for office every two years, he goes in and signs an oath that he is a registered voter. The State of Washington has a law saying you must be a registered voter to be a Congressman. That’s nowhere in the Constitution.
George Will: All kinds of states have laws that say if you’re going to run for Congress, you can’t hold certain other offices. It’s not in the Constitution. All kinds of restrictions on voter choices and politicians’ options that already exist, the Term Limits would be simply another one of those. Congress is… Reforming Congress is so particularly interesting to those with a bent toward political philosophy, because Congress being the locus of popular sovereignty in the United States is the locus of the modern political problem.
George Will: The old political problem was thought to be the tension between the ruler and the ruled. And for a while, people thought popular sovereignty solved all those problems. But the sovereign people themselves can, it turns out, be a problem, particularly when, as de Tocqueville warned, “You have a compassionate and solicitous government that degrades men without tormenting them.” In de Tocqueville’s language. It degrades them by kindness, by courting them, by supply side politics in part. The attempt is to produce in Washington, a political class and an institution capable of deliberation as opposed to the mere registering of interest.
George Will: I’m fascinated… Again, it seems to me if we just listen to the common language of our lives, we learn so much. The word clout is one of the most common and defensive words used in American political discourse, ’cause it assumes… It postulates, it teaches that politics is a collision of forces. No persuasion, one clout is bigger than another clout, is how you settle arguments. And indeed that is how it works too much.
George Will: But in fact, by changing the way we select the people who staff our institutions, we can acknowledge the fact that political virtues are not natural, they are nurtured, they are the product of artifice, and Term Limits is a Madisonian artifice. By working on the institution, you will affect the workings of the institution. To make it possible in Madison’s language in Federalist 10, “For the institution’s better to refine and enlarge public opinion.” That’s what the founders thought representatives were to do. To add reason to mere willfulness, that is what you are more apt to get, I believe.
George Will: So there is built into America a literally congenital, from birth, distrust. Term Limits will raise the trustworthiness of government. I side, however, with Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 68, when he said, “The true test of good government is its aptitude and tendency.” Listen to the temperate language they used. The aptitude and tendency, not the certainty. The aptitude and tendency to behave reasonably.
George Will: Ah, but some people said, “Aren’t Term Limits anti-democratic?” Well, they are, if the First Amendment is anti-democratic. If the first eight amendments which are, “Shall Not” Amendments. Is it anti-democratic to refuse to the people the right through their elected representatives to establish religion and abridge freedom of speech? I don’t think so. It is part of the way we structure free government and popular sovereignty.
George Will: It is passing strange, I may say, in passing, for opponents of Term Limits to say that they’re opposed to Term Limits because they so passionately believe in the unfettered right of people to vote when these very people will not allow Term Limits to come to a vote in Congress. Will not allow it to come to the floor of the House of Representatives. Every year Term Limits of the House Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Jack Brooks, who has been in Congress since God was a child, and is himself… Is himself, an eloquent argument for Term Limits, and there it dies.
George Will: In the Senate, where it is less easy to bottle things up, Term Limits first came to a vote in 1948. It got one vote. That of the man who introduced it. About three years ago, Term Limits got 30 votes. The last time around it got 39 votes. As I say, I think the tide is running strongly. There are others who say, “Well, we don’t need Term Limits. The key is campaign finance reform.” There’re two problems with that. The terrible campaign finance rules that we have now… At least the people who say campaign finance reform is the key say they’re terrible. The campaign rules we have now were written by incumbents. The next set of rules will, by definition, be written by incumbents, and they will not be written to handicap incumbents.
George Will: Furthermore, all campaign finance rules, in my judgement, that restrict either political spending or giving, are by the logic of the Supreme Court, unconstitutional, because they ration the permissible amount of political speech. That’s my view. The Supreme Court lags behind me on this, and on so many other matters. But I think will come around one of these days. It is finally said that… And I’m really just touching on these things so that we can argue about them in a moment. It is said that government is so complicated nowadays, that we need the expertise of people who have been there a very long time in order to run it.
George Will: Two responses to that. One is maybe if that is what we need for that kind of government, we shouldn’t have that kind of government, but I will pass that over. I will simply say that being a senator is far less demanding and far less complicated. Running a Congressional Committee, being a representative of any Congressional district… Far less demanding than being say Secretary of Health and Human Services or of the Interior, or the Treasury, or Attorney General or anything else. And those Executive Branch departments, huge sprawling and consequential, are generally staffed by people who come to Washington from the private sector, stay four years or so, and leave. So the idea of expertise seems to fail.
George Will: Today, already we have 15 states… Have enacted Term Limits. Those 15 states have 40% of the American population. This year alone, Los Angeles in June, New York in November, the two largest cities in the United States, voted for Term Limits. And that, in very short compass, is the case for Term Limits. Thank you very much.
[applause]Philip Blumel: Any other news from around the country we should know about this week, Nick?
Nick Tomboulides: Ah, yes, we do have a bit of bad news out of…
Philip Blumel: Right.
Nick Tomboulides: The Louisiana State legislature where if you recall, the Term Limits convention had passed the State House by an overwhelming margin. But the Senate did not feel as strongly about listening to the American people, listening to their constituents. And so they unveiled a very unusual parliamentary maneuver, a parliamentary trick, to kill the resolution, and called the motion to lay it on the table. And unfortunately that passed with 21 votes. And in the Louisiana Senate the resolution is dead for 2021.
Philip Blumel: Well, we have our fingers crossed, but maybe that one’s now not the most likely prospect for our next victory. This was a big year… We won West Virginia completely, and we also won half of Louisiana and we lost the other half, but we won half of North Carolina, half of Tennessee, half of Georgia. And we are alive in Pennsylvania. So, revising the question I asked in the previous podcast, what state do you think is going to be next to pass the Term Limits Convention Bill?
Nick Tomboulides: I would put my bets on North Carolina or Pennsylvania. I think both are very viable. Pennsylvania is a year-long session, and so there’s no rush to get it done right now. I think if the legislature is not willing to bring it up right now, they can always bring it up later when their docket is a little bit more clear. North Carolina is the other one. They are in session until mid-August, and so they have some time to operate. The key there, will be seeing whether Senate President Berger and Committee Chairman Raybon are willing to give the resolution a hearing or not. Because we believe if it can get to the floor and the members have an opportunity to vote on it, it will pass, but right now, there are a few gatekeepers who have to make that decision.
Philip Blumel: Okay. And I note also that in the case of Georgia and North Carolina and Tennessee, those half-victories, if we can’t nail it down this session, will carry over to next year so we don’t have to re-win those chambers. So, we got a lot still alive here…
Nick Tomboulides: Correct.
Philip Blumel: Even though we lost in Louisiana. And to be clear, if I didn’t make it clear, we’re talking about the Term Limits Convention, the application by the states calling for an amendment writing convention, limited to the subject of congressional Term Limits.
Nick Tomboulides: And by the way, stay tuned because in the next few weeks and months, we’re gonna have some big announcements to make in all of these states that are still alive. So…
Philip Blumel: Stay tuned.
Nick Tomboulides: Stay tuned.
[music]Philip Blumel: Thanks for joining us for another episode of No Uncertain Terms. The Term Limits Convention Bills are moving through the state legislatures. This could be a breakthrough year for the Term Limits Movement. To check on the status of the Term Limits convention resolution in your state, go to termlimits.com/takeaction. There you will see if it has been introduced and where it stands in the committee process on its way to the floor vote.
Philip Blumel: If there’s action to take, you’ll see a take action button by your state. Click it. This will give you the opportunity to send a message to the most relevant legislators, urging them to support the legislation. They have to know you are watching. That’s termlimits.com/takeaction.
Philip Blumel: If your state has already passed the Term Limits Convention Resolution, or the bill has not been introduced in your state, you can still help. Please consider making a contribution to US Term Limits. It is our aim to hit the reset button on the US Congress, and you can help. Go to termlimits.com/donate, termlimits.com/donate. Thanks, we’ll be back next week.
Stacey Selleck: Find us on most social media at US Term Limits. Like us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and now TikTok.
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