Specter jumps to the Democratic Party

[Cicero]

We have them here in California. Right now, one of the longest serving members in California's Assembly is Tim Leslie. When his terms run out, he takes a room in a B&B in a district where he thinks he's got a shot, then runs for office. Usually, he wins, mainly because he's run enough over the years that his name is known.

The Bee, our local paper, has done such a sorry job of reporting Leslie's rather dubious achievements over the years, he's considered a good shot for Lt. Governor in 2010. Never mind that over the years, he's done next to nothing for California, that he's done next to nothing to help curb our out of control budget, and that he's not any sort of a leader, people keep voting for this cretin because they know his name.

Term limits work when the media does its job. In fact, they're unnecessary when the media does its job, because the incompetent, the greedy, the stupid, the crooked, the inept simply don't get re-elected.

Since when does the local electorate care if their representative is an immoral, pompous, egotistical, hack regardless if the media highlights their shortcomings, as long as they bring home the pork? The problem is these officials sit on committees that effect the rest of the nation.

On the other side of this, with term limits, we've lost good representatives who worked on the behalf of the people of the state, while in other cases, we would have lost them if they'd been able to stay in office. BT Collins was a superb member of the Assembly for us, and we learned we could trust him. He did what he said he would, stuck to his guns when principle was involved, and was a credit to the Assembly in the eyes of both parties. He died of a heart attack prior to the end of his second term, which is unfortunate, since I'd have voted for him for State Senate.

Consider the case of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who turned out to be the Daniel Webster for our day. While many disagreed with him, he was, in fact, one of the best statesmen this nation had produced in this day. The most moving tribute when he passed came not from those on the left, but from George Will.

FDR ran for his fourth term knowing he would die long before completing it. There is no such thing as an indispensable politician. Monyihan may have been an exceptional politician, but his protégé Chris Matthews is a turd.

I'm not convinced Term Limits have been the benefit they've been advertised to be. It's a concept that caters to the lazy and ill-informed, people who shouldn't be voting in the first place. Frankly, I'm grateful the concept hasn't gone any further, since it's turned out to be such a bust for us here in California. What I'd like to see is the Bee getting some serious competition from the Union and the News and Review, both of which remain weeklies, and both of which need to turn daily. Oddly enough, the N&R, which tends to be left-leaning, ran the best in depth coverage of Gray Davis' "leadership," and showed why the crooked son of a bitch never should have been elected in the first place. (It also revealed just how deeply in Enron's pocket Davis and his cronies were, while Mark Williams, at the time a talk show host at KFBK, currently working with Move American Forward, revealed that Steve Moviglio, Davis' press secretary, had been given a huge chunk of stock from Enron's board. That Moviglio is still in state service is disheartening.)

You have to do more than simply limit terms. You have to demonstrate how that's going to benefit the average citizen of the state. Show how people will gain from that, put together a system that gets rid of the boobs and keeps the brains, and you might have something.

If people bother to turn out to vote, how are they lazy? It is very difficult to vote out of office an entrenched politician. I suspect that it is the indifferent voters that help to keep these career politicians in office, not the ill-informed.