I'm sure there are plenty of hypotheses as to why this happens, but whatever the cause elected officials seem to have an extremely easy go of getting re-elected these days. The increasing average age in Congress is just a side effect of that in my opinion.
If there are age minimums for these federal offices there should be age maximums.
Yes there are skills to be learned to be effective in such a system, but being too entrenched in it can lead to forming relationships that overshadow the relationship with their constituents.
Term limits are effective against populists, for whatever that's worth.
What you're describing sounds to me like the politicians are inconsequential puppets and the machine must be limited or removed. I could a tuallg get behind that idea, it wouldn't take much to convince me that term limits don't go after the real problem.
Maybe that would even include a Constitutional convention. I've long been of the opinion that we should be updating the Constitution more often, and more easily. It isn't intended to be frozen in amber.
Personally, I'd also be so interested to see what the political response would be today if a group of well known and respected individuals scheduled a constitutional convention to honestly hold such discussions. It's exactly what we did to being the process of breaking away from the king, I wonder if they would get shut down somehow?
This is somewhat inefficient but it also minimizes major problems.
I think this gets a bit further down the road than my original goal of a quick solution that could be implemented now for some benefit, but yeah I'd love to see power pushed as far down the hierarchy as possible.
Theres no magic bullet unfortunately. Any line in the sand will have people caught in the crossfire, whether that's a person over the age limit that would make an excellent representative or a person who is blocked from a third term that actually isn't corrupted by the machine of political favor, lobbyists, etc.
If the machine itself is broken, any changes or limitations to the output (the politicians here) are just bandaids. I do actually think we should fix the underlying problem, but hopefully term limits could buy us some time and start to remove power from those who gained so much by the system that needs fixing.
It might be better to lower the income to 90th or 50th percentile, so only people that actually wanted the job would take it.
Ideally, the restrictions would extend to the kids. It would definitely extend to the spouses.
Also, all no campaign donations over $50. Finally, all campaign communications must be publicly archived in realtime, and no more political ads. (The latter is because some politicians now tell different, personalized lies to each constituent, thanks to the internet).
Another possibility is to let anyone volunteer for congress, then pick the winner at random from the pool each term. This worked amazingly well for local positions in some country that tried it. (Government efficiency immediately doubled or something.)
I see that as a different problem to solve, but yeah if the solution to one can supercede the other I'd get behind that.
I actually really hate this idea whenever it comes up, at least for the kids. It feels rather oppressive that you could have your largely-estranged parent decide to get into politics, and have that entirely derail your life.
The current system gives us a bunch of grifters like the Trump kids or Hunter Biden, to be sure, but I'd rather directly punish the parent who's being corrupt than their children who don't even hold office.
A wealthy person is also totally fine with whatever the salary is, because they already have a bunch of money.
Imagine working at a job where there were rules that forced your company to lay off all the most experienced folks after a few years.
Sounds miserable to me.
The president shouldn't be any more popular or powerful than a Senator or representative in Congress, arguably they should be less so because Congress writes the laws and controls the budget. But the way American politics works, driven by populism and celebrity worship, you'd think the President controls the entire government like the CEO of a company.
Remove their power to pardon and issue executive orders - a President shouldn't have the authority to overrule the judicial or legislative branches. Give them a single. six year term. Make it illegal for them to hold any further government position, then boot them out. The Presidency should be nothing more than a revolving door of nobody bureaucrats, like a Prime Minister.
Also, they shouldn't get Secret Service protection for life. They can have the same Second Amendment protections as other citizens after office, which are supposed to be perfectly sufficient. Or let them hire private security.
It is a special case.
Unless you are saying we need to abolish the position entirely and just rely on the legislative and judicial branches of the government on their own.
But until that happens the presidency is a very specific position that only one person holds. But at the end of the day, Congress as a whole holds more power, so term limits in Congress I would consider much more impactful (in a bad way) than term limits on the presidency.
I'm not saying that, although I do find the idea appealing. Mostly I'm saying the position of President has been elevated in the ideals of American politics far out of proportion that what it should be, and the position itself has all of these weird Neo-monarchical backdoors to give the Presidency some degree of carte blanche power over the other branches, just because the founding fathers didn't trust the other branches to be capable of doing their jobs.
American Presidential elections have become national events to rival the Superbowl, but few Americans care nearly as much about judges, or Senators or Congress, much less local government. By default, most will write off the entirety of government as a fully corrupt, perfectly incompetent sewer, not worth engaging with, believing in or thinking about beyond spite. Only the President is seen to have true agency, can be justified as representing the people, and has the power to enable actual change, almost through sheer force of will alone. At least if they're from your party.
I just think the balance is entirely out of whack but I'm not certain whether that's a symptom of merely politics or a flaw in the system itself.
Oh add both of those to the list of things I wish we could remove! Pardon are often used as little more than political capital, and executive orders reek of executive overreach and an abuse of power.
1- One six-year term on the presidency. Enough time to get stuff done and see the results, but then you're out. The current structure gives the American public 1-2 years of productivity, then they go into campaign mode on the tax payers dime.
2- All official party nominees get the exact same budget for campaigning. Creates a level playing field and neutralizes the power of lobbying
3- Congressman, Senators, Governors are limited to a single 6 year term. This will create a lot of churn, require voters to get engaged to understand the candidates better, and eliminate lifetime politicians who will inevitably be corrupted (I'm a cynic).
Need to ponder how to hedge the power of the people behind the scenes who support the office since they are unelected and undoubtedly powerful (I'm thinking about the people writing Biden's scripts, who are they, who elected them, what do they believ, etc.... we know he isn't doing it).
Give them a fixed number of years and have new ones appointed on a schedule that's synced to presidential terms.
I see a need for impartial testing of "able to do the job", such as "can count backwards from 20 without falling asleep or missing any numbers or going briefly catatonic".
Term limits definitely aren't a magic fix, I just see the tradeoffs as worth it relative to my personal concerns.
How does forcing new candidates every number of years ensure that elected officials will be "popular and effective at their job"?
I don't actually like governments creating regulations and drawing lines in the sand. As many have raised with term limits, it isn't a perfect answer and at best bandaids the real problem rather than fixing it.
I'd argue that's the case with any regulation emposed on large populations, there are just too many complexities at that scale to draw a clean line. With term limits specifically, I see it as an unfortunate but possibly necessary tradeoff that may at least give us a chance to start fixing the real problem. We both need more time to find the right answer, and we need to remove those who collected so much power and control from the same system that needs to be fixed in the first place.
And there is nothing that prevents the replacements from abusing the power and control afforded to them in similar or worse ways. They'll be kicked out regardless of what they do, so why care about the long term?
If power is largely collected by the office itself, or the party behind the talking head, then I agree replacing them more often may not help much.