If you haven’t seen the video of Senator Robert Byrd’s Barbaric speech on the Senate floor you need to watch it. If you have any doubt that the man is senile you won’t after viewing it. His speech is about the ’sport’ of dogfighting and was prompted by the recent arrest of Michael Vick, an NFL quarterback.

What is this man doing in the Senate? He will be 90 years old before the year is out. He has served in the House and Senate since 1953 — 54 years and counting. Why do the people of West Virginia keep electing him? Probably because they think he can bring home more pork than a new senator. Surely it’s not their idea of a cruel joke on the rest of us.

Sadly, this is not the most egregious case of voters sending a senile senator to Washington. South Carolina sent Strom Thurmond to the Senate for 48 consecutive years. He was 100 years old when he quit. If the man had decided to run again would they have re-elected him again at the age of 100? Probably; he had to have been at least 94 when they re-elected him the last time. I remember seeing him on C-SPAN sitting in a wheel chair and appearing to not know who or where he was.

Mississippi gave us John Stennis for 42 years and to the ripe old age of 88 (well, compared to Thurmond, Stennis was practically a spring chicken). He retired voluntarily too, so we don’t know what the Mississippi voters would have done either.

So what’s up with voters sending goofy old farts to the Senate? Are they so pessimistic in regard to politicians that they don’t think it matters if their senator doesn’t know what day it is — or nods off at the podium? A better question might be: If that many states are sending senile senators to Congress, how many are electing senators that are totally incompetent in less obvious ways? I’m afraid that a lot of them are.

Do these politicians not have close friends or relatives who can convince them that they’re too old to serve? They’re obviously past the point of being able to realize that themselves. A potential argument: Since you’re unable to dress yourself now, perhaps your effectiveness as a senator is also degraded. This gives us another argument for term limits: to prevent politicians from embarrassing themselves.

How long before a senator dies in his seat and no one notices? How long before some state unknowingly re-elects a dead senator?

(I decided to retire when I was 62 for several reasons, one of which was that I didn’t want my colleagues to remember me as a doddering old fool. I wanted you, the readers of this blog, to remember me as a doddering old fool. Now, five years later, I tend to forget what…)

I believe that it is time to impose term limits on members of Congress — on both Senators and Representatives. It’s time to get rid of the career politicians and return government back to the people. This is certainly not an original idea. People have been pushing term limits for years.

Paul Jacob is a strong advocate of term limits for local, state and federal legislators. He is a Senior Fellow of the US Term Limits organization. Other organizations, and web sites, that advocate term limits are Florida, Stop the Politicians and Citizens for Term Limits. And there are many others. As with any political issue there is a lot of support and opposition. See the references at the bottom of this post for a sampling.

I believe that the best, and sufficient, reason for term limits is that it will make Congress more responsive to the people. A member who believes that he or she is vulnerable to replacement is a member that will work a lot harder to represent the views of his or her constituency. Another good reason is that it will get more people and more ideas involved in the legislative process.

The most prevalent argument against term limits is that it will create a Congress of amateurs and effectively shift the legislative process to congressional staffers. It appears to me that staffers already do most of the heavy lifting and if it takes more than a few months for a new member to learn the ropes, then we shouldn’t have sent that person to Congress. Another argument is that lobbyists will have their way with the short-term inexperienced members. From what I read lobbyists hate the idea of term limits.

I have followed Jacob’s work for several years, mostly through his opinion pieces on Townhall.com, and I generally agree with his views on term limits. His organization has made a lot of progress at the local and state level but not much at the congressional level, mainly because there are huge hurdles to get over. The main hurdle is that a constitutional amendment is required to impose term limits on Congress. There are only two ways to amend the constitution:

• Congress passes an amendment by a two-thirds majority and then three-fourths of the states ratify it.
• Two-thirds of the state legislatures apply to congress to hold a national convention; the national convention passes an amendment; and then three-fourths of the states ratify it.

The national convention method has never been used to successfully pass an amendment to the constitution.

Since making congressional term limits the law of the land is not likely to happen any time soon, we, the voters, need to impose them directly. We need to limit members of the Senate to one six-year term and members of the house to three two-year terms. We can do this by taking a personal vow not to vote for an incumbent who will exceed six years in office if reelected, and to never vote to return that person to Congress in the future.

I understand that this might be difficult to do considering that many of the other voters haven’t taken the same vow or that they might break the vow. As a result their members of Congress will likely have more seniority and more power than yours. But we have to take a stand and start chipping away at the present system that practically guarantees that all un-indicted incumbents are re-elected. Perhaps, as more and more incumbents lose, those remaining in office will start to get the message and clean up their acts. And those that realize they are going to get only six years in office might become inclined to support mandating term limits.
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Cato Policy Analysis — Real Term Limits: Now More Than Ever by Doug Bandow

The New American — Term Limits Temptation by George Detweiler

Cato Policy Analysis — What Term Limits Do That Ordinary Voting Cannot by Einer Elhauge