Term Limits

What will make politicians listen to us? Many of them stay if office so long they lose touch with the "common man". They begin to think that government can make decisions that affect us better than you and I. How do we fix this? Term limits? Really?

If I understand this logic correctly it goes something like this:

We can't get politicians who don't respect our opinion out of office because we are too dumb or too lazy to research what they are doing and vote them out of office. The only other possibility is that our opinion is actually in the minority, therefore the only way we can get someone who effectively advocates for a position contrary to our own. In any case, we need government to intervene in the form of term limits.

How this is not increased government control is beyond me? Supporters are saying they need government control directly in the electoral process to tell us who we can no longer vote for. Forget that we may have a representative with excellent constituent services, highly competent and honest, but since he/she has reached their arbitrarily assigned expiration date, it's time to take this individual off the shelf. This control must be applied in spite of the fact that in this day and age we have ready access to every vote, contributors, and contact. We can watch C-Span all day long to keep an eye on him or her. Basically anything you want to know about how your representative is doing his/her job is readily available, yet we are saying that on the aggregate, we are unqualified to tell when it is time for a change.

Now I'm not about to mourn for the pols that are leaving this stage of their careers prematurely. They will make plenty of money lobbying their old colleagues. Yeah, that's gonna fix Washington.