About a year ago, I wrote a column suggesting that we put minimum age requirements in place for those who seek elective office. Maybe even increase the ones we have in recognition of modern life expectancy, education and career paths. It was a controversial idea for some. My main reason for promoting the concept was to attack the problem of career politicians on the front end and weed out those who might be susceptible to the temptations of power because of their youth.
At the time I was asked whether I also favored term limits. I didn’t have a ready answer and I’m not sure I do today. There are benefits to seniority and I like to think most people gain wisdom with age (I realize this is not universally true). A recent article in Connecticut Magazine has me thinking I could be convinced to sign up for term limits.
In the May edition of the magazine, Editor Charles Monagan suggests a series of term limits: three terms for U.S. senators, 10 for U.S. representatives, two for governors and 10 for members of the state legislature. He notes that all his proposed limits are more generous than those offered by term limit zealots.
His editor’s letter begins with an interesting question hooked on the news of day. “Imagine Chris Dodd’s career if there were such a thing as sensible term limits.”
Monagan is not proposing term limits to penalize politicians for being successful at the ballot box. He is proposing term limits to protect them from themselves. He notes that the longer someone stays in elective office the more likely they are to develop a sense of entitlement and it is that loss of perspective that most often gets them in the type of trouble Dodd finds himself in today. His character and integrity have been called into question and his reputation is at stake as he nears the end of his career.
Monagan has a point and it is fortified through personal experience. As he once wrote, he has seen life from “both sides of the swizzle stick” having worked in journalism and politics. His father served as a congressman from Connecticut’s fifth congressional district from 1959 to 1973. Fourteen years. He writes that his own family sensed the “dark bloom of entitlement” growing in Congressman John Monagan toward the end of his career and that he later agreed with his family that his loss of power was “probably one of the best things that ever happened to him.”
If Sen. Dodd runs for re-election and loses in 2010 it won’t be because of any single question that has been raised about his service in the last several months. It will be because an entire series of issues has called his judgment into question. His time as one of the most popular men on the Washington D.C. campus has changed him. He can’t see it and his supporters can’t see it because they have been blinded by privilege.
As Monagan answers his own question about Dodd’s term limited career, he imagines Dodd leaving the Senate in 1998 to serve as an ambassador in Latin America, returning to run for governor after John Rowland’s second and final term and wondering during his last years in the governor’s office what assignment he might tackle in the Obama administration.
Minimum age requirements and term limits don’t prevent politicians from pursuing a full career in public service, but they do prevent elected officials from becoming entrenched. Most public servants do not show up for the job corrupt on day one. It’s something that grows on them over time.
Dean Pagani is a former gubernatorial advisor. He is vice president of public affairs for Cashman and Katz Integrated Communications in Glastonbury.
