Proposing a constitutional amendment for “Term Limits” is one of the most popular campaign messages out there. Many who believe term limits will fix the problems in Washington have no idea why our Founders didn’t add term limits to the Constitution.
Organization like COS (Convention of States) conveniently avoid discussing why they weren’t added either. Instead, they leverage all that “Term Limit” support when proposing to state legislators that they should apply to Congress to call an Article V Convention.
Convention of States Senior Advisor, Robert Natelson, has even been known to goad individuals by saying that an Article V convention hasn’t happened yet, “because Congress refuses to propose a term limits amendment, and we haven’t had the guts to call a (Article V) convention to propose one.”
What COS leaders fail to mention, is that our Founders completely rejected term limits. They had term limits in the Articles of Confederation and understood why such limits would be extremely harmful to a Republic.
Back then, term limits were called “ineligibility for re-appointment” and one of the most prominent Founders, Roger Sherman, emphasized the need for frequent elections instead of term limits. Sherman explained, “Frequent elections are necessary to preserve the good behavior of rulers. They also tend to give permanency to the Government, by preserving that good behavior, because it ensures their re-election.”
All in all, term limits lead to perpetual lame-duck Congresses.
A perfect illustration of this was caught on camera with an open mic at the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit where President Obama said to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev; “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”
So, what do you think will happen if the House of Representative and the Senate does not have to consider the impact of their actions for an upcoming election? Are you willing to take that risk?
Learn more about Article V and the amendment process by visiting JBS.org.