Comment: Term limits

Grosse Pointe Today:

"Most voters had never considered the idea of term limits for anyone other than the constitutionally term-limited president until 1994, when crusading Republicans made the issue a cornerstone of their so-called Contract With America. The idea was always more flash than substance; recall that they were most vigorously pushed by Newt Gingrich, who was at the time running for his ninth-yes-ninth term in Congress. And now, 12 years later, many of the congressmen and women who were elected that year remain in office and don’t want to discuss term limits anymore. The congressman I left behind in Indiana, Mark Souder, has one excuse after another for why the pledge he made so fervently in 1994 is no longer binding, and considering he’s a heavy favorite for re-election, the voters don’t care much either.

But recall what else was abroad in the land in 1994 — fury. Voters were angry at what they perceived as a corrupt, do-nothing Congress, feathering its own nest with a bank that let members kite checks, pay raises that appeared like manna from heaven and other perks average Americans saw as undeserved, the work of a group more concerned with cementing its own power than serving the public."