Over three-fourths of Americans think there should be a maximum age limit for elected officials, according to a CBS News/YouGov survey.

  • @DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de
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    210 months ago

    a shorter term limit will term out qualified, great representatives with real expertise

    This assumes that representing people requires skills, experience, and expertise that can not be obtained elsewhere and can not be provided by advisers. If representing constituents interests did require specific skills, there would be pre-requisite courses. We don’t elect people to design and build nuclear reactors - we select them based on their skills. There are certainly skills involved in being a career politician, but these aren’t necessarily serving the public interest. I often feel like a politician’s main job is convincing constituents that their preferred course of action is best, rather than simply representing constituents interests.

    a shorter term limit may intensify corruption if a rep or senator only has so much time to cash in and line up that fat consulting gig

    This doesn’t make much sense to me. As in, we need to keep shitty politicians around for longer to kind of water down and spread out the shittiness over a greater period of time lest it be intensified.

    • @MimicJar@lemmy.world
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      210 months ago

      I often feel like a politician’s main job is convincing constituents that their preferred course of action is best, rather than simply representing constituents interests.

      I know what you mean, but conceptually isn’t that the point?

      For example constituents work jobs and make money. Why should I give money to the government? It’s the politicians job to convince the constituents.

    • phillaholic
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      110 months ago

      This assumes that representing people requires skills, experience, and expertise that can not be obtained elsewhere and can not be provided by advisers

      That’s correct. It can’t be. New Representatives basically get nothing done. It takes them the two years they have to learn the ropes before they have to start fund raising for their next election. Federal Office is like Professional Sports. How often does someone just walk into it with no prior experience and succeed? It’s not just about representing. It’s about knowing how to negotiate and convince other representatives to care about what your constituents want. If Advisers are doing all the work, why don’t they just run? You know who has all the time and money to “advise” candidates? Lobbyists.