OPINION:
One of the many accomplishments of President Trump during his one term in office was to expose the malevolence, treachery and pervasiveness of the “swamp” in Washington. That such an entity would exist was predicted as long ago as 1788, when an anonymous essayist noted that from time to time, lawmakers would become “inattentive to the public good, callous, selfish, and the fountain of corruption.” During that same year, Thomas Jefferson agreed when he wrote, “I apprehend that the total abandonment of the principal of rotation in the offices of the president and senator will end in abuse.” Wow, were they prescient!
The last time there was any serious push for term limits was in 1994, and it rather quickly ground to an abrupt halt. Is it time to revisit that notion? I would argue a resounding yes, and I am not alone. A national survey conducted in March 2021 by McLaughlin and Associates found that 80.1% of respondents approved of a constitutional amendment to place term limits on members of Congress. This result is particularly astounding in a climate where citizens can’t agree on what bathroom to use, when human life begins, who should be let into the country or what should be taught in schools.
A major argument against imposing term limits is that doing so will not address the problem of the persistent big-government incursions of the unelected, vast federal bureaucracy. In my view, that is a bogus argument about which brevity does not permit a discussion here.
So let’s get on with it. After all, the people want it, so our representatives should work on it. Don’t they work for us?
RON PHIPPS
Annapolis
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