Frail Infirm Grifters

Term Limits Are Not Enough

This morning I read Suzy Weiss article about the aged people in the House and Senate. She was a page in Washington DC and witnessed the infirmity of plenty of our elected representatives first hand. Kay Granger is not an outlier. Nancy Pelosi just fell and broke her hip. She’s serving another term. She’s in her 80s. Her stock trading is legendary and she isn’t the only person in Congress with a keen interest in stock markets.

Disgraced and former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was one of the greatest land speculators in the state of Illinois. Amazing insight. Uncanny. The old wrestling coach made millions in farmland.

Most of America regardless of which political party you are in wants term limits. The President has them, and there is no good reason for Congresspeople not to have them. Because they don’t control the Supreme Court, Democrats are trying to pass term limits for Federal judges. They don’t have the self-examination powers to understand they need to do it to themselves in Congress.

When I used to go to Washington once a year to lobby and host a party with Congress I was surprised when I saw people in the flesh. We are so used to seeing photos or videos of people who lead us it’s shocking when you are physically present with them. Weiss commented that Harry Reid was tall. He’s 5’10”. Bob Livingston of Louisiana was tall. He was almost 6’4”. When I met Ted Kennedy I was shocked at not only how fat he was but how ruddy his face was from drinking.

One thing I noticed was that as soon as people got to the Senate they moved slower. They seemed infirm. Part of that was because of their age. Generally, Senators were older than the people in the House. Suzy talks about a Senator who was incontinent while walking down the hallway and I think I know who it was. When I was in DC, two hulking aides would carry Strom Thurmond down the hallway and to the underground subway so he could vote. As they propped him up between themselves like a football player with a knee injury being carried off the field, Thurmond would shuffle his feet back and forth like he was “walking”. After the vote, he’d “walk” back to his office to sleep.

Strom Thurmond wasn’t the only infirm person I saw.

Another shining example of grift and disrespect to all Americans resides in Michigan. The House of Dingell. They must think the House seat they have occupied for almost a century is in the English House of Lords, not the US House of Representatives. John Dingell Jr.’s wife, Debbie Dingell, sits on the throne her husband occupied for a record time. She “ran” for it when he died. John Jr. was there from 1955 until 2015. In 1955, Dingell's father, John Dingell Sr., died. Dingell, a Democrat, won a special election to succeed him, and like a bad penny never left. Dingell Jr.’s father was elected in the New Deal wave election and “served” from 1933 to 1955 when he died. No doubt Debbie is weeding and fertilizing the infield for her descendants.

The problem is while the Dingells are extreme, they aren’t unique. All over America, we can point to families that consistently “serve” the public in political office. It is the family business. An obvious one to Chicagoans is the Daleys but the Madigans are not any different. The Romneys. The Kennedys. The Cuomos. There are plenty of family dynasties in politics.

Part of it is because the families realize how easy the money is. Skimming, and shuttling money to cronies using their political power with the requisite wink back is part of how they stay in power. The other part of it is simple statistics. Statistically, it’s hard to unseat an incumbent. I don’t know the exact number, but it’s a probability of over 67% an incumbent gets re-elected and with gerrymandering in House seats, I bet the probability is stronger than that. In states, gerrymandering plays a big role in the makeup of state legislatures.

The first rule of dynastic politics is to avoid competition.

Washington DC politicians continuously engage in behaviors that disrespect the American people and unravel the Constitution. Once elected they think they are above the document that binds our country together. The pardons and many of the Presidential Medals of Freedom Biden issued in the past weeks are great examples. But, being so infirm that you cannot carry out the duties of the office yet staying in that office is another sign of their hubris and disrespect.

The path to DC is well trod. Today, the bane of American existence is the career politician. Is there anything worse you’d want to hear from your kid than “I want to be a politician”? Doomed to a life of grift and bloodsucking. A non-creator. A person who is non-additive to human progress.

Very few politicians engage in a longer career of working in the private sector before entering politics. That’s one reason someone like Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren is so dumb when it comes to her statements about the private sector. Having her on the Senate Banking Committee isn’t dangerous because of her far left-wing politics. The real reason is that she has no clue how the banking system interacts with private industry.

Let’s look at the career trajectory of the average career politician. Typically, a kid will major in political science. Poli Sci is a gut major. There is no rigor around it and in today’s college environment, the kids are force-fed a steady diet of far-left pablum. During college and after college, they will work for a politician or some non-profit cause a politician acts as a benefactor for. They will understand and learn how it works. The next rung is to run for a local office getting sponsorship from that politician and the local machine. That is unless they come from a fabulously wealthy family where they can make the jump to DC right away. Sometimes that fails. Illinois governor JB Pritzker failed at making that jump and bided his time until it was ripe.

Money talks and bullshit walks in politics. Unless you fit a certain characteristic like Illinois Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth. Vapid and unintelligent she is disabled, ethnic, US veteran, and female. Too bad she isn’t trans or gay. One big virtue signal. She reminds me of the Modern Family episode where the gay couple tries to get their kid into private school.

They have to get elected so they will curry favor with the local political machine. They serve in that office a couple of terms, and then look for a higher office to run for. We find out how sharp their elbows are in that race because there are other people in the same party gunning for that office. We also find out who their patronage comes from. They serve there, then leap to national office. Most of the time they have a primary so we find out more about their patronage. Once in national office, they do all they can to stay there as long as they can. Their primary job is building a network for themselves, and fundraising. Their votes are not representative of their district but of their donors and patronage.

If they get sick of the job or heaven forbid, lose an election, there is a well-trod exit ramp for them. The US bureaucracy welcomes them with open arms. Lobbying firms will pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars for their influence. Corporate boards will hire them for the same. This is when the grift goes into overdrive. They suck as much money out of the system as they can until they die.

This is why term limits do not go far enough to cure what ails us in America.

What should we do?

1. Term limits for sure. 12 years for a House member, 18 for a Senator. That’s six terms in the House and three in the Senate allowing them to work with two Presidents.

2. Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds has proposed taxing a Congressperson’s income at 50% with no write-offs the first few years after they leave office if they engage in lobbying. This is a fantastic idea. Even with a Fair Tax, it should stand. Why? Because it creates an adverse economic incentive for former members. Secondly, it forces them to reintegrate into society and become productive members of it. If they want to run for state office, that’s a state issue.

3. Here is another thing that needs to happen. Pass a law on the total number of years you can be in public service during a lifetime. Make it something like 25 years, with the exception of being a President or Vice President. Here is the rationale. If a college person works they work in the private sector from the age of 21 until 65. That’s 44 years. Allowing someone to be in public service for a little more than 50% of that time forces that person to become a productive member of society when they aren’t. Instead of serving themselves as a “public servant” they can serve customers and create for all of us. Every single entrepreneur who starts and operates a business does more for society than any publicly elected official.

4. Pensions for all elected officials go from defined benefit to defined contribution. No more free retirement benefits like health care. They get to pay like the rest of us. It’s not as if they are suffering as public servants. New York City just passed a congestion toll and guess who doesn’t have to pay?

The system the Founders set up is sick. It won’t be enough for Elon and Vivek to use $DOGE to fix the bureaucracy and spending. The American people have to speak and enact term limits with other stringent measures to heal the system and ensure that we don’t find ourselves in this position again.

Otherwise, brush up on your Greek and Roman history and understand why they fell.