I want to talk about term limits. Not in the abstract way politicians talk about term limits, which is to say enthusiastically when they are running and never again once they win. I want to talk about them the way a man who has watched the same people vote themselves raises while telling him to tighten his belt talks about them. Which is to say directly and with some frustration.
The average American changes jobs every four years. The average American moves every seven years. The average American adapts, pivots, gets laid off, starts over, figures it out, and keeps going because that is what life requires. The average American congressman has been in the same job since before some of their constituents were born and has accumulated enough seniority to ensure they never have to face a serious challenge again.
Robert Byrd served in the United States Senate for 51 years. Fifty one years. Frank has shoes that are not that old. Strom Thurmond served until he was 100 years old. One hundred. Frank does not know what he will be doing at 100 but Frank is fairly confident it should not involve nuclear launch codes and appropriations bills.
Here is what the Founders actually thought about this.
The Founders were not naive about power. These were men who had just finished fighting a war against a king. They understood what happens when people hold power too long. They understood it so well they wrote extensively about it.
Jefferson believed in rotation in office as a fundamental democratic principle. He argued that without it, offices would inevitably become hereditary in practice if not in law. The people currently occupying those offices would ensure their own continuation through accumulated advantage, incumbency protection, and the simple reality that the longer you hold power the better you get at keeping it.
He was describing 2025 with a quill pen in the 1780s.
The presidency got term limits in 1951 after Franklin Roosevelt won four consecutive elections. Congress decided the president needed limits. Congress did not apply the same logic to themselves. Frank has noted this. Frank suspects you see the problem.
The argument against term limits and why Frank finds it unconvincing.
The argument against term limits is that experienced legislators are more effective. That institutional knowledge matters. That it takes years to understand how Washington works.
Frank would like to address this argument directly.
Washington not working is not a bug that experienced legislators have failed to fix. Washington not working is the current product of experienced legislators who have been there for decades. If fifty years of institutional knowledge produces a Congress with a 12 percent approval rating and a national debt that requires scientific notation to express, Frank is not sure more institutional knowledge is the answer.
The other argument is that voters can already remove legislators through elections. This is technically true the same way it is technically true that you can eat a bowl of cereal with a fork. Possible in theory. Unnecessarily difficult in practice. Incumbents win reelection at rates above 90 percent in most cycles. The system is not broken. The system is working exactly as the people running the system designed it to work.
What Frank actually wants.
Frank wants a Congress that looks more like America. People who have worked jobs, paid mortgages, raised kids, dealt with insurance companies, waited in lines, experienced the actual consequences of the laws they pass.
Not a permanent political class that has spent their entire adult life in a building where someone else does their laundry and a taxpayer-funded cafeteria serves them subsidized meals while they vote on your grocery budget.
Twelve years. Six terms in the House, two in the Senate. Do your time, do your job, go home, and live under what you built. The Founders called it citizen service. Frank thinks that is still a pretty good idea.
The people currently in office disagree. Frank notes that they also get to vote on whether term limits happen.
Frank notes that they have not voted for term limits.
Frank notes that this should tell you something.
— Frank