[batteryhorse]

I can't express how wrong this response is.

Term limits are necessary, there should be no such thing as a "career politician". A politician should be required to have actual skills, and not just a nice smile.

Experience with politics is meaningless, there should be NO establishment. It is always the new guy who reveals the truth to the people, which is a good thing. Experience only results in being able to lie to the public, to further the establishment. Otherwise it becomes us vs them.

People will do anything to maintain power. It should be one year and out, nobody should be able to get rich by becoming a politician.

A good first step would be to get rid of Diane Feinstein.

[jacobolus]

In my opinion Dianne Feinstein is terrible compared to alternative politicians CA might elect to the job, but if you live in CA or one of the other states with state-level term limits and you think they are a good idea, you haven’t been paying attention. Pretty much everyone involved in state politics is unhappy with the results of the term limits imposed for the past 10 years (in CA they were enacted in 1990, but legislators didn’t start getting term limited out for a while).

They don’t prevent people from becoming a “career politicians”, they just make it so that the career is less predictable or stable: new careerists are constantly being churned up from local politics and put into important committee chair jobs (etc.) where they have no relevant competence or experience, the top legislative leaders only last for a couple years, and the most experienced legislators get dumped out the top, often to become paid lobbyists. This encourages short-term legislation including bills mashed together that don’t make sense. Civility/comity is undermined, because legislators don’t need to keep working together years into the future.

To compensate legislators have to lean a lot more on their staff (who are the only people around with some clue about the context). The executive branch gains power at the expense of the legislature, because (a) executive officials are often more experience, (b) the executive can outlast an uncooperative legislative leadership by just waiting a couple years, (c) term-limited legislators have a more precarious career and might be looking for an appointment to a next job.

[hellogoodbyeeee]

This is such a strange sentiment to me. You would never hire an amateur Carpenter to work on your house. You would never hire an amateur DBA to build your company's key data architecture. But you want the people who run the country to be amateurs?

[manquer]

Usually it is the bureaucrats that actually run the country and they are career professionals

[barry-cotter]

Why not do away with the farce of elections then if the civil service is actually in charge?

[manquer]

The elected officials provide direction which the electorate wants the government to go in, basis which they won the vote, The civil service only execute the directions

[Viker]

But a political is supposed to be a "representative" of the people. Not some kind of professional wordsmith...

[int_19h]

Carpenters and DBAs don't have a monopoly on legal violence. Politicians in charge of a polity do.

[TangoTrotFox]

The role of politicians is not based on expertise, it's to have views that are representative of their constituency.

Our system was originally designed specifically to avoid professional politicians. The initial articles of confederation included term limits. It was only removed after substantial debate. An anonymous essay penned in response to this decision suggested that people who were elected for long periods of time would become "inattentive to the public good, callous, selfish, and the fountain of corruption" continuing with,"Even good men in office, in time, imperceptibly lose sight of the people, and gradually fall into measures prejudicial to them." It's a shame they did not sign their name to the writing as I think we could label this view as fundamentally and absolutely correct. It's perhaps ironic that term limits were likely stripped from the articles not in good faith, but by those earliest 'special interests' who longed be the first professional politicians. The same interests that perhaps drove those stating truth-hoods to do so under the guise of anonymity.

And that problem is endemic to the whole system of professional politicking. Rather than focusing on 'the mission' politicians end up focusing on themselves and getting elected again. In an ideal democracy that would mean they have to work to appease the people. In reality, most of the electorate is grossly uninformed or misinformed. Generally all that matters when getting elected is money. And where does money come from? Not from the masses, it comes from special interests and top dollar donors. An issue only compounded, though not inherently caused, by the variety of ways to avoid any donation limitations such as messaging through 'independent' politician action committees.

[scottlocklin]

Yes.

Athens picked their Senators by lot, and we probably should consider it.

[wavefunction]

I consider it foolhardy. Can you imagine our most important foreign and domestic policy being set by people who center their lives both moral and emotional around 'Keeping up with the Kardashians'? Or getting a bunch of antivaxxers in there?

There are plenty of decent Americans but we also have too many that are juvenile, superficial, ignorant and aggressively incurious.

[scottlocklin]

What's the worst thing that can happen? We just finished hailing a borderline criminal/traitor Senator whose entire career seemed to be predicated on endless war with the entire world. I'm pretty sure the average antivax Kardashian fan is less evil than that. Maybe we'd even manage to withdraw from Afghanistan after 18 years.

[dillondoyle]

Being a good politician I think has two meanings which kind of drives this divide in opinion: 1) being good at getting elected 2) being good at getting things done

It really does take experience, connections, networks, and skill to accomplish things in legislatures. Same with getting elected.

The problem is in order to become #2, you have to become #1.

Unless we as voters become far more informed and drastically change the way we evaluate candidates I don't think we'll get #2 skillsets from politicians who also don't have the qualities many term limit advocates despise.

[Ygg2]

Why not just cut out 1) all together. Let people get chosen randomly.

[jackvalentine]

How do you get rid of them? Term limits? Then we go back to the problem of having people who can get things done...

[Ygg2]

By default, after one term they are dismissed. Only exception is that few of them (like one or two) that are judged as good are kept.

Think evolution algorithm on a government scale.

[jackvalentine]

Judged as good?

[therealdrag0]

Imagine if your doctor was chosen randomly.

[Ygg2]

Imagine if politician had to study politics for 10+ years.

[throwawayjava]

> Experience only results in being able to lie to the public, to further the establishment.

This is not the case in other fields such as Engineering, Medicine, Education, or Law. More experienced engineers, doctors, lawyers, and educators tend to be better at their craft. Failing to keep up with new methodology/technology is also a problem.

It's almost like the quality of the person is more important than their age or seniority.

Now, I don't have any first-hand experience with legislatures. However, based on analogies in fields I'm more familiar with, I am a bit suspicious of the claim that there aren't any advantages to seniority and experience.

Also, consider this concrete question: would term limits fix the student debt problem? I don't see any arguments in this thread that it would.

[godzillabrennus]

I think the biggest counter argument to why we need experienced people in government is that the tide has turned where old people have their interests represented but young people do not.

Student loans fuel retirement accounts for old people.

Lack of upward mobility helps old rich people.

Tax cuts for the rich by and large help old people.

We have a nation governed by geezers who only care about geezers.

[TangoTrotFox]

I think this understates the real problem. As people become professional politicians, their interest becomes more and more about what benefits themselves. It's not about geezers caring about geezers -- it's about geezers who only care about themselves.

You can consider this in a really simple, but also regular and real, scenario. You're faced by a decision. One choice you think is bad for the country but is strongly supported by various special interest groups who will likely run major positive advertising and other positive 'propaganda' for you, if you go that route. The other decision is good for the nation but vehemently opposed by these same interests. You can expect negative advertising and other consequences should you go this route. It's not hard to see which decision a "professional" politician is going to pick, regardless of whether they're 20 or 90 years old.

Ideally this would all be a nonstarter since you stay in office by getting elected. So do what's good and you get elected again, right? But this goes out the window when people are so easily swayed by the media and misinformation. A very large chunk of people don't measure the results of the nation independently, just based on what they hear in the media or by easily exploited emotional responses.

[zhdc1]

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

The highest level of government is the worst place I can think of to have a cadre of amateurs running the show.

[ur-whale]

You are correct in that they are certainly not amateurs.

Where you err deeply is if you believe their skillset is about running the country.

It's not. It's about getting re-elected and trafficking influence.

[specialist]

I once believed as you do.

Attend some public hearings. Watch how the experienced lobbyists and administrators run circles around legislators.

I now advocate for professional legislators (full time gig) with sufficient staff to tackle the size and complexity of modern governance.

[syshum]

>>sufficient staff to tackle the size and complexity of modern governance.

How about instead of "professional legislators " you advocate the reduction of government both in size and complexity. that seems to be a better option IMO

[cmurf]

>Term limits are necessary, there should be no such thing as a "career politician". A politician should be required to have actual skills, and not just a nice smile.

Why are they necessary? How is claiming they are necessary not inherently impugning the concept of self-rule, how is it not inherently illiberal and arbitrary? What kind of base ideology are you subscribing to? Why shouldn't there be a career politician? What are examples of "actual skills" that you think should apply for proper legislating or executing or judging laws?

As someone who did study political science and law, I find term limits in law to be an abomination. A cheat. A long term destroyer of trust and institutional knowledge. You want actual skills, but you refuse to grant a person with such actual skills the position of a professional, with a career. It's an illogical position.

I doubt there is some Dunning-Kruger effect really going on with STEM folks and politics, although the blinders on approach I consistently see makes it superficially appear like that might be possible. Instead I think it's discomfort with the fact there are multiple ideologies, and you must choose, and it is that which will guide your future decision making on policy. Without the choise, you're vaporware. And without adversarialism, you're milquetoast. In both politics and law, the adversarial system is mandatory. I get way more suspicious when two ideological factions agree with each other from the outset on something than when they're adversarial and compelled to compromise. There is no compromise and there is no innovation without adversarialism.

I miss Feynman though. There was a guy with a very good balance between comfort not knowing, and discomfort not knowing. Lack of hubris, and yet no lack of ambition to learn.

[ur-whale]

>A good first step would be to get rid of Diane Feinstein.

Just for this, I am obligated to upvote.

[lamarpye]

> A good first step would be to get rid of Diane Feinstein.

Father Time is undefeated.