GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley on Thursday called the Senate “the most privileged nursing home in the country.”
In response to a question about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) apparently freezing up on Wednesday while taking questions in Covington, Ky., Haley said on Fox News that the Kentucky senator has “done some great things, and he deserves credit,” but emphasized that “you have to know when to leave.”
““No one should feel good about seeing that any more than we should feel good about seeing Dianne Feinstein, any more than we should feel good about a lot of what’s happening or seeing Joe Biden’s decline,” Haley said. “What I will say is, right now, the Senate is the most privileged nursing home in the country.”
Power corrupts. The end. The longer you are in positions of power, the more exposure you have to influence from money. It needs to be a revolving door for every elected official. Get in. Do good things. Lead by example. Move on up or gtfo.
I feel like that misses a lot about how politics work. Someone just getting into office is often far too ineffective for us to allow our system to be run by first and second term legislators. First term legislators are often fairly useless because they are still learning the job. I’m not saying there is no solution to that, but it would have to be coupled with massive reform around the support mechanisms for our legislatures. You think the federal government is slow moving now, just wait until everyone in office has no idea how to do their job.
Edit: Also as others have pointed out, you’d also be terming very competent legislators along with the corrupt ones. I think people overestimate the amount of corruption in the legislative branch, due to the media creating a confirmation bias. For every evil corrupt piece of shit, there are 5-10 people you’ve never heard of just doing what they think is right (even if you don’t agree with them).
Edit2: maybe a better solution is a dementia/Alzheimer’s in person test given to all legislators past 65 every year, evaluated by a 3 doctor panel. If you fail the test, you’re legally prevented from running and forced to resign if in office. If removed the political party impacted gets to appoint the replacement, otherwise if there is no political party (true independent) the executive branch of that state gets to appoint replacement.
Places that have instituted term limits have found them to backfire. They have less effective legislators who are more corrupt.
It makes sense when you think about who would be able to run constantly – rich, retired people.