Quote:
Originally Posted by crockett
The issue is money in politics, not how long someone has served.
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crockett, seriously, it's not an either or proposition and the problems resulting from career politicians are historical and this was a big issue to address when this nation was formed:
Term limits date back to the American Revolution, and prior to that to the democracies and republics of antiquity. The council of 500 in ancient Athens rotated its entire membership annually, as did the ephorate in ancient Sparta. The ancient Roman Republic featured a system of elected magistrates?tribunes of the plebs, aediles, quaestors, praetors, and consuls?who served a single term of one year, with reelection to the same magistracy forbidden for ten years.
According to historian Garrett Fagan, office holding in the Roman Republic was based on "limited tenure of office" which ensured that "authority circulated frequently", helping to prevent corruption.
Many of the founders of the United States were educated in the classics, and quite familiar with rotation in office during antiquity. The debates of that day reveal a desire to study and profit from the object lessons offered by ancient democracy.
In 1783, rotation experiments were taking place at the state level. The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 set maximum service in the Pennsylvania General Assembly at "four years in seven". Benjamin Franklin's influence is seen not only in that he chaired the constitutional convention which drafted the Pennsylvania constitution, but also because it included, virtually unchanged, Franklin's earlier proposals on executive rotation. Pennsylvania's plural executive was composed of twelve citizens elected for the term of three years, followed by a mandatory vacation of four years.
On October 2, 1789, the Continental Congress appointed a committee of thirteen to examine forms of government for the impending union of the states.
Among the proposals was that from the State of Virginia, written by Thomas Jefferson, urging a limitation of tenure, "to prevent every danger which might arise to American freedom by continuing too long in office the members of the Continental Congress".
The committee made recommendations, which as regards congressional term limits were incorporated unchanged into the Articles of Confederation (1781?89). The fifth Article stated that "no person shall be capable of being a delegate [to the continental congress] for more than three years in any term of six years".