Today, if people are against term limits, they'll often explain that term limits have been a disaster in California, right up there with earthquakes, mudslides, and rush hour on the LA freeways.  In fact, legislative term limits have not worked very well in California.  But is it simply that term limits are a poor or ineffective reform?  Or are there factors in California which doomed term limits in that state?  What lessons can we learn about term limits from the California example? 

Before turning to these questions, let's consider the purpose of term limits.  Limiting by statute the number of terms a legislator may serve is designed to make the lawmaker more judicious.  The best illustrations of civic judiciousness in action are found on juries.  All across the United States ordinary citizens routinely sit in judgment of individuals accused of crimes, including the most heinous offenses.  In such cases, every member of the jury is either a potential victim , or has loved ones who are potential victims, of the accused murderer, rapist or pedophile.  The psychological and emotional incentives for the jurors tell them to take no chances and to get the accused off the streets.  The juror may be fairly sure that a defendant is guilty, but the standard is not "fairly sure;" it is "beyond a reasonable doubt."  Note that jurors are ordinary people, who must be educated on the spot in both the law and the particulars of the case.  They are often sequestered during the trial to insure that their judgments are not influenced by current public opinion.  The juror is often asked to uphold the abstraction of "justice" in the face of powerful motivations that implore the juror to act otherwise.  In spite of this, the justice system usually gets the jurors  to overcome personal biases, feelings and prejudices, see beyond the superficial, apply reason, resist popular pressure, and act for the common good.

Founding father James Madison wanted legislators to act similarly.  In Federalist #10 he pointed out that all lawmakers, who necessarily have interests, act as their own judges and juries in legislative matters , which makes them highly fallible.   Madison and his colleagues therefore built what we call "checks and balances" into the system in order to discourage laws that served narrow interests rather than the overall good of the nation. 

Madison himself went still further to try to give Congress the temperament of a jury.  In his Virginia Plan, Madison called for a radical one-term limit in the Houseof Representatives.  There, members would not be distracted from their duty by the prospect of re-election.  Rather, they would be focused on the pressing issues before the country.  They would be regularly drawn from the people to act on the people's behalf, but they would be discouraged from acting on their own or their constituency's narrow interests.  They would be encouraged to transcend narrow and short-term considerations and apply reason for the greater good, much the way a juror is asked to do. 

Madison's term limits were dropped at the Constitutional Convention, though he tried again by arguing for an advanced age qualification for senators so that they would be too old to run for re-election.  He must have presumed that older men, less preoccupied by the need to amass personal wealth, would be more immune from corruption and manipulation by narrow interests.   Instead, they would act in ways that would help them secure their legacies and be well-remembered by posterity.

Madison and his fellow founding fathers would be horrified by political careerism, because the founders well understood that perpetual re-elections are not synonymous with the common good.  The sum total of the nation's special and narrow interests, as well as the short-term interests of individual politicians driven by the election cycles, does not equal the national interest. 

Unfortunately two studies on term limits in California by the Center for Government Studies clearly demonstrate that term limits have done nothing to weaken the drive of political careerism in that state.  If anything, term limits in California have aggravated the worst tendencies of career politicians.  Circumstances in California can explain what has gone wrong.

In 1990 Californians enacted a limit of three two-year terms for members of the Assembly and four two-year terms for the State Senate.   While politicians have been more quickly circulated through elected government in California, it is still a system dominated by careerists.   Most alarmingly from a Madisonian point of view, legislators are even more narrowly focused on short-term and narrow interests than before.  Many bills before the California Assembly are designed to address popular or expedient issues, concludes the Center for Government Studies.  These are called “brochure bills” because they "are designed to build a legislator’s resume for re-election.” 

This year  the voters of California made an adjustment in their term limits law by limiting overall service in the legislature to 12 years (currently it’s 14 between the two houses) but lawmakers are now permitted to spend all 12 years in either the Assembly or the Senate.  This will do little to end political careerism, but it should at least weaken the incentive in the Assembly to spend time angling for a Senate seat.    

Obviously term limits in California have not worked as intended.   Term limits are designed to produce "citizen legislators," but the majority of California's legislature consists of former local elected officials; they come from the “farm system” for career politicians.  Local politicians have access to campaign cash from special interests and a political base within the Assembly district from which they spring.  They will have built up these  essential political assets over the course of years in local office.   In California these advantages are decisive because the legislative districts are enormous.   Assembly districts contain 460,000 inhabitants and Senate districts, which are bigger than US Congressional districts, contain over 840,000 inhabitants.  It is extremely difficult for an ordinary citizen to raise enough money and become  known well enough to run competitively in such large districts.  As a result, local politicians are always overwhelmingly favored  to win election to the California Assembly.

Once in the Assembly, the political careerists are desperate to raise more cash and make themselves look good because they have only six years to prepare for their next move – to thestate Senate.  From the Senate, it's game-on to get elected to the US Congress, for which the state senator has eight years to get ready.  Clearly these conditions are not conducive to the Madisonian reasoned pursuit of the common and long-term interests of the state’scitizenry.

In California, term limits have failed to disrupt political careerism because they are too feeble as a stand-alone reform.  Indeed, without taking a systemic approach to reform, term limits by themselves can backfire. 

How might we encourage citizen government in California at the expense of political careerism?

First, it must be made realistically possible for ordinary citizens from almost any walk of life to be elected to the California Assembly.  A clean election system that puts campaign funds in the hands of non-office holders would go a long way toward achieving this end.  Smaller districts would also help significantly.  If the California Assembly were enlarged to the size of the US House of Representatives by creating 435 seats, then district size could be shrunk to 86,600 , a far more manageable ratio for would-be citizen legislators.   Californians, if ready to get radical, could cut district size still more by going to a decentralized model in which members of the Assembly stayed in their home districts with their constituents while collaborating and voting through electronic means.  California might just be the perfect place to try something innovative like a decentralized assembly.

Another radical but interesting reform would be to require all office holders to rotate out of all public offices after completing their terms.  They'd have to empty their campaign war chests and would be ineligible for any elected office or political appointment until they’ve sat out of politics for a certain period.  Such a system would force the kind of rotation of offices consistent with republican theory going all of the way back to the ancient Greeks.  For the ancient republicans, it was essential that lawmakers be always "rotated" completely out of office to live for a time under the laws of their own making.

Those interested in cleaning up the US Congress might well consider the lessons from California's experience with term limits.  First, as in California, without a clean elections system or small districts, members of Congress would be mostly career politicians (See here for an excellent discussion on the merits of small Congressional districts.)  Members of Congress, experts in fundraising and political organization, would still be drawn from an unrepresentative pool of citizens with personality characteristics that may not be conducive to true leadership. 

But unlike in California, term-limited members of Congress – if, say, limited to 12 total years in either house – would already be at the top of the political food chain.  They would have no higher office for which to run,except for president or possibly governor.  Most would probably realize that their days in power were ending and would finally be liberated from the all-consuming drive for still more power and endless re-elections.  Hopefully then they would discover sufficient character to act first and foremost for the good of the nation. 

The real lesson to be learned from the California experience with term limits is not that term limits don't work.  It's that they don't work in isolation.  By themselves, term limits can't restore citizen government in a system 1) comprised of large legislative districts, 2) dominated by the constant need for campaign cash from moneyed interests who invest almost exclusively in incumbents, and 3) magnetized by the constant pull on politicians to higher office. 

American government is experiencing systemic failure.  The repairs and rebuilding of that system ought to be inspired by the wisdom of James Madison, who understood human nature all too well.  The system must be thoroughly reformed to permit true public servants to rise into positions of leadership – and to expel those who come to love their own status and power more than they love their country.