When South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn recently announced that he would be seeking an 18th term in the U.S. House of Representatives, my first thought was “why?” Why have we allowed a permanent political class to evolve? Like Phil Bredesen or Bill Haslam, why can’t people enjoy their government job for a while and then go home?
Regardless of what you thought of his policies or effectiveness, it is genuinely strange that Joe Biden spent more than 20% of the entire history of the United States in elected office.
Perpetual politicians aren’t just a Washington problem. They show up at the top and bottom of the ballot – including in the upcoming Knox County primary elections.
Skepticism of career officeholders does not mean I consider raw inexperience a virtue. But decades in elected office seem to help mostly with getting re-elected, not with actually solving public problems.
While there will be some newcomers on the ballot (mostly candidates for legislative positions), the fields for the eight Knox County fee offices (County Clerk, Circuit Court Clerk, Criminal Court Clerk, Law Director, Property Assessor, Registrar of Deeds, Sherriff and Trustee) feel like the same rotating cast playing musical chairs in the City County Building.
Voters approved term limits for those offices back in 1994. The officeholders simply ignored them for more than a decade until the Tennessee Supreme Court finally upheld the limits in 2007. (The “Black Wednesday” saga that followed is still interesting – and depressing reading for anyone who wasn’t around at the time.)
Rather than eliminating permanent officeholders, term limits simply produced a pool of high name-recognition perpetual candidates who now leverage their familiarity to hop from one office to another every few years. And for some, elected office has become the family business – a taxpayer-funded dynasty passed from one family tree limb to another.
Some years ago, after writing a column favoring term limits, I was interrupted at lunch by the spouse of an elected official wanting to know why I was trying to take food off their family’s table. “How would you like it if someone tried to take your clients away from you?”
Before I could explain that people do try to take clients away from me every day, this person had created such a scene that the dignified gravitas of the late Bill Regas was needed to calm the situation.
It was, I think, my first encounter with entitlement. And it was grotesque.
I’ve long believed that you should never elect someone to a public position if it would be the highest paid job the person has ever held. That test alone would clear out an embarrassing number of candidates — and probably improve governance in the process.
David Moon is president of Moon Capital Management. A version of this piece originally appeared in the USA TODAY NETWORK.