From the desks of
William Wilson SCW Georgia
Editor Robert Hein LL Georgia
[Part 1] of this Three-Part Educational Series reviewed the overwhelming bi-partisan public support for Congressional term limits and inevitability of re-election by most incumbents.
[Part 2] explores the huge change in average length of service of a Representative or Senator from 1789 to the beginning of the Twenty First Century. The House increased from 2.5 years by the 1800’s to 9.4 years today. The Senate increased from 4.8 to 11.2 years. Both averages are almost 2 years longer than the President may serve under the Twenty-Second Amendment.
Part 3 concludes with a look at the actual words of Thomas Jefferson to James Madison in 1787. He warned us of the very problem we face today. Congress’s outrageous, profligate federal spending is an abuse of power. We have a permanent ruling class of career politicians who no longer answer to the American People.
The House official website claims that Representatives are “more responsive” to the American People,
“The Constitution grants the U.S. House of Representatives a unique set of powers in the federal government, embodying the framers’ intent to make it uniquely responsive to the will of the people. James Madison of Virginia, the father of the Constitution and the House’s most important statesman in the early Congresses, believed the House should have ‘an immediate dependence on, and intimate sympathy with, the people’.”
The Founders were well aware how abuse of power may come from holding a federal public office. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton knew “good men would not always be at the helm.” In 1789 they predicted future politicians might disregard “the good of the whole.”
Madison cautioned in Federalist No.10, “Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages [votes] and then betray the interests of the people.”
Still, the Founders chose not to create term limits for Congress, the President, or Supreme Court Justices.
The first term limit under the Constitution did not occur until the Twenty-Second Amendment. That 1951 change imposed a two-term limit on a President.
The Articles of Confederation represented America’s first attempt at a centralized federal government following the 1776 Declaration of Independence. Article V provided that Representatives were selected each year by the States and limited to three, one-year terms in any six-year period.
In the 18th century, term limits was called “rotation in office.” Rotation was designed to prevent corruption among politicians who might gain too much power if they stayed in office too long.
There was vigorous debate among the Founders at the 1787 Constitutional Convention on the need or effectiveness of forced rotation in office. Ultimately, term limits were rejected in favor of frequent elections every 2 years as a check on corruption.
On October 24, 1777, just after the Philadelphia Convention ended, Madison wrote to Jefferson in Paris describing the new plan of government.
Thomas Jefferson was apprehensive about abandoning the principle of rotation, fearing it would lead to abuses of power. In a December 20, 1787, letter to James Madison, Jefferson commented on his objections to the proposed 1787 Constitution. He told Madison,
“There are good things of less moment. I will now add what I do not like. First the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly & without the aid of sophisms [false arguments] for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal & unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land & not by the law of nations.”
And then, “The second feature I dislike, and greatly dislike, is the abandonment in every instance of the necessity of rotation in office, and most particularly in the case of the President. Experience concurs with reason in concluding that the first magistrate [the President] will always be re-elected if the Constitution permits it. He is then an officer for life.” Jefferson Writings, The Library of America, publisher, Ninth printing, 1984, p. 916.
Jefferson’s words to Madison were several months before he wrote Federalist No. 53 [arguing that term limits were not necessary for Congress].
If the Founders had been able to look through a “window in time” 234 years into the future and see the average time served in Congress, perhaps they might have adopted “rotation” or “term limits” after all. On the other hand, maybe not.
It was a miracle the Founders were able to reconcile their differences enough to create the 1787 Constitution. As related in the book James Madison (L. Cheney, 2014) Madison had doubts about the flaws in the document he helped create. Among other things he felt it did not go far enough to control the “unwise and wicked proceedings of the states.”
James Madison and Alexander Hamilton were engaged in a massive public relations and sales program. They wrote the Federalist Papers asking the American People to support ratification of the new Constitution.
It seems ironic that both Madison and Hamilton knew only too well that the power of office in federal government would not always have educated and sound statesmen such as themselves. They recognized “good men would not always be at the helm.”
They knew the likelihood of corruption and control by federal officials to the detriment of the People and the Republic; yet, they also needed to get the Constitution ratified. They went as far as they could and hoped to include missing provisions by amendment at a later date.
As foreshadowed by Jefferson in his 1787 letter, there was optimism that future generations would fix problems through experience and learning what was not working.
The incentives for Congress to resist term limits is strong.
We have a modern-day word that describes the effects of the permanent political class we now have in Washington, D.C. – “The Swamp.” It is evident every time a new spending bill passes that is full of pet projects, misguided policy, and excessive spending.
Convention of States seeks an Article V Convention to obtain Amendments that will “limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, impose fiscal restraints, and place term limits on federal officials.”
Jefferson stated in his Dec. 20, 1787, letter that the Constitution should be amended once the public “has been duly weighed & canvassed by the people [and] seeing the parts they generally dislike.”
Will you answer the call to take action and offer your time as a volunteer?
