It's Time for Term Limits... for Political Staff
Anyone remotely familiar with politics today knows the era of citizen statesmen has long since passed. Elected officials are often career politicians and many of the staff best positioned to affect real change have similarly made a career of policymaking. Term limits for politicians in Congress has long been debated but the debate should be expanded to include term limits for political staffs, both in Congress and the Executive Branch. Staff are servants of the people, just as their bosses are. But staffers are humans and so are also self-interested. How can conservatives expect staff to work to eliminate agencies and programs when doing so eliminates their own livelihoods?
Just as for elected officials, in order to ensure they are truly serving the public and not their own interests, political staff, that is, those appointed or hired directly or indirectly by members of Congress or the President, should be term limited in their service.
Opponents of term limits generally make two arguments. First, as James Madison wrote in Federalist 53, elections are the only term limits elected officials need. Obviously, however, staff are unelected. Second, term limits drain talent and institutional knowledge.
Institutional knowledge can of course be beneficial but one should be wary of it being a hinderance. Policy, as all careers do, requires a level of expertise. One cannot expect a layman to walk off the street and into Congress without understanding what has come before and expect him to be competent. But staff like to pretend policy expertise can only be gained from decades of experience. Experience can be helpful but particularly in the digital age, with diligent use of the publicly accessible resources anyone with appropriate thoroughness and intelligence can become a policy expert.
Perhaps the biggest challenge conservatives in D.C. are confronting is how to proactively stand for small government principles rather than, to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, make honorable retreats from the left’s desire to grow government. In the left’s long march towards government largesse they’ve wound government’s tentacles into ever more niche areas. When they do Republican staff in Congress and the Executive Branch develop expertise in these areas. They build careers in these areas. And, through attrition and a deep culture in D.C. of “experience makes right,” they are the ones who are positioned to make actual change and shrink the size government should the opportunity arise. But just like politicians, staff serve the American people, not their own interests. Politicians who campaign on reversing government expansion, and more importantly their constituents, are not well-served by people who are more interested in their careers than serving the interests of the American people.
True, term limits for staff may further imbalance the power differential between government and the private sector. But staff-level term limits would help to return the concept of citizen statesmen to the capital.
On a more practical level, term limits will bring new blood into policymaking. Disruption is rightly all the rage in the private sector. In the few instances it has come to Washington, massive positive changes have come with it. Fresh ideas and fresh approaches from fresh people can break logjams. Finding peace between the Arab countries and Israel has for decades been a quagmire for the American foreign policy establishment. Yet in four short years new thinkers came to Washington, addressed the topic in different ways, and solutions otherwise unachievable were achieved. By mandating routine infusions of fresh blood into the policymaking branches more breakthroughs across all policy areas, both large and small, are sure to come too.
Implementing term limits for staff would help drain the swamp of the policy establishment that is ever-more detached from working Americans. The Framers’ intent for Washington, D.C. was for it to be a city of sojourners comprised of Cincinnatus-style statesmen selected by their neighbors to come to Washington and represent them for a short time before returning to their real professions. While the Framers could not have comprehended the size and scope of the supporting staff elected officials receive and need today, certainly their expectation would be for the same fresh blood they expected of elected and appointed officials to apply to those around them.