[erentz]

I think there’s something to be said for an limit. A term limit on congress of 12 years might be the easier and more straight forward option. This would probably resolve 80% of the age problem as they’d run over their term before they got too old.

[aaron-lebo]

There's some poli sci research that suggests the main effect of term limits in California is to bump people upstairs to compete for positions they aren't worthy of and removes capable leaders from their positions artificially.

If your electorate isn't wise enough to kick a bad leader out after 12 years (remember, even today the average term is below 12 years), then maybe that's a problem less with the representative of the voter and more with the voter.

That's the big problem here. Political leadership is pretty miserable, but who is electing them? They're just a reflection of society. Kick them out and it is more of the same.

Proposition 140, an initiative narrowly passed by California voters in November 1990, imposed sharp limits on the terms of California legislators.1 These limits will have a dramatic impact on that legislature as an institution. Internal structures such as leadership, committees, parties, and staff will be weakened or made external. This weakening of legislative structures will force most external players, including interest groups, to expend substantially greater resources for a return diminished in effectiveness and predictability. Put simply, the cost of doing business will increase while the return will decline. This combination is likely to advantage groups with both resources and a stake in state government but to discourage participation, divert efforts elsewhere and encourage cheating by others.

Here's an abstract. This stuff is pretty easily Googleable if you are interested.

Also more newsy:

http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/bill-whalen/article31032...

[erentz]

I suspect the reason people don’t kick out politicians anymore is increasingly its difficult to do. This seems to be a fairly reasonable interpretation of the above data too. In the past politicians were unseated more frequently leading to shorter average terms. Now they’re rarely unseated leading to longer terms.

Seats aren’t contested enough because of the massive amount of party support or funding required to beat a sitting person. And we’ve seen how these two parties are corrupted and need to care less about the public opinion now. Less options means less choice for voters to do what you suggest.[1]

Of course I think the real solution to that is election reform with single transferable vote (STV).

[1] though we seem to be seeing some backlash in the past year against this such as with the Justice Dems movement.

[labster]

Agreed that term limits have not been a force for good in California politics.

Imagine you had a law that no programmer or engineer could work at your company for more than 6 years. You could keep them employed, but they'd have to transfer to a difficult department, like sales or legal. Also your product is over 20 years old. Does this policy sound helpful?

[lele92n]

That’s the flip side of term limits. Doesn’t mean the advantage isn’t worth it

When they say “weakening” that seems like an emotionally overloaded choice picked for cultural resonance.

Is it really a weakening or just a new model to acclimate to and tweak as needed to ensure outcomes?

Why is giving any ground or change always coming along with “we won’t be strong in the same way!” rhetoric

Duh but that doesn’t negate the argument for change given other data over here

We’ve yet to discover a unified theory of reality

I highly doubt our system of social governance has found an equivalent

It has to change. It will change if history is any indicator

Better to have the conversations ourselves then leave it up to experts across the world

[imjustsaying]

The problem with 2-term limits is that the official has more of an incentive to loot as much as he possibly can as soon as his second term begins because he doesn't have to worry about spinning the looting to voters anymore.

However, I do recognize that the looting probably occurs anyway without fear due to the high likelihood of incumbent re-election.