No Limits, Terms Limits or perhaps Ballot Limits?

There is often a discussion about politicians and whether we should have term limits. If you go back to the founding of this Country, think about whether the Founders EVER would have thought that we would have professional politicians. I suspect the attitude back then was to serve your Country and then go back to your life.

The first question comes up as to why we should have any limits. Some people say that the voters should decide and that there should not be any limits. This would work if people were to actually look at the job the politician is doing, rather than all the political advertising garbage. Do you really know ALL of what the politicians are doing? Then consider ALL of the campaign donations that person gets. How does a non-imcumbent compete with that? How does a non-imcumbent compete with the name recognition?

One way is to have term limits to try to limit the professional politicians, yet with term limits the politicians scurry from office to office in order to try to stay in office. Why? They don't want to give up all the power and control. Consider how many politicians get rich from being in office and it is not from the pay from the position.

The reason some say that we should not have term limits is because we could have a good politician and that person should not be tossed out. One question is whether there is ever really a good politician. If there really is a good politician, can that person remain good in the political system? Personaly, I don't think so. I think that the system corrupts people, so out of personal protection we need to cycle people through the jobs. This would limit the personal power any one person has over us.

But are term limits really the answer? I don't think so. I think a far better answer is to have Ballot limits instead. A Ballot limit restricts how many times a person's name can appear on the ballot for a specific office (or perhaps for any office to prevent a person from going from office to office). It could be a lifetime limit or it could be limited by the number of years that the person is office. For example, if the person was in office for 8 years, then their name could not be on the ballot for 8 years. The person could still run a write-in campaign or wait to run again, which levels the playing field in regards to campaign money and name recognition. This deals with the issue about the claim of removing good politicians from office. If the politician is really doing a good job, then they would still be able to get re-elected.