Politics / A Limited Future
Norquist, Grover G.
be closed. Clinton swore up and down that he was not giving in to terrorism, now defined as domestic far-right extremism. No, he was giving in to the Secret Service, which was giving in to...
...Passing the amendment would require sixty-one more...
...The decision also gives term limits supporters a stake in the next president and his possible appointees to the Supreme Court...
...All told, thousands of sheriffs, mayors, and city councilmen will be graduating as a result of term limits, creating an army of challengers at the national level...
...Term Limits' sister organization, Americans for Limited Terms, has already received pledges of more than $8 million for the 1996 campaigns...
...Statement Two said the legislator would "consider the vote of the people for United States Senator...
...Republicans also put an eight-year term limit on the Speaker of the House—the same limit the president faces...
...Leaders of the amendment drive suchas Howie Rich and Paul Jacob, respectively the president and executive director of U.S...
...The women's suffrage amendment took longer—it was first voted on in the Senate in 1887 and not passed until thirty-four years later—but followed the same route of changing the rules in the individual states first...
...But another, equally serious rationale is limiting the seniority system in Congress, by which powerful committee chairman—like Dan Rostenkowski or Ted Kennedy—become de facto representatives for the entire country...
...Representatives and senators have a stake in opposing term limits, but the rest of official Washington is just as strongly opposed, and even more disingenuous...
...Next year, if the voters get rid of Bill Clinton, perhaps the next president can undo the damage, and give America back its street...
...the guy could easily have stabbed Clinton had he been so inclined...
...Under the current system, all power derives from the length of the member's term—it's not freshmen who have powerful staff, or long-standing friendships with powerful lobbyists...
...Roll Call, the congressional newspaper, has reported that thirty-nine Republicans and four Democrats are publicly committed to limits...
...Term Limits, have long understood that their task is more difficult than that of other activists seeking changes such as the balanced-budget amendment...
...Two states—Utah in 1994 and New Hampshire this year—adopted term limits by action of the legislature...
...In 1912, the 17th Amendment merely ratified a fait accompli...
...0 The American Spectator August 1995 59...
...senators and congressmen...
...By 1908 twenty-eight states had such mechanisms, and senators were, in effect, popularly elected...
...In any event, closing Pennsylvania Avenue had a political dimension: it was another step in Clinton's post–Oklahoma City positioning, recasting himself as a beleaguered leader fighting the forces of darkness...
...The Supreme Court decision may be a Pyrrhic victory for term-limit foes, for it has already emboldened activists who are seeking to use a constitutional amendment to push through their reform...
...0/ n May, the Supreme Court struck down the laws of twenty-three states limiting the terms of U.S...
...No, he was giving in to the Secret Service, which was giving in to terrorism...
...The Clinton administration cheered the decision, in which its two judicial appointments (Breyer and Ginsburg) concurred...
...The Supreme Court decision has created a term limits version of the National Rifle Association: a political bloc that is well-funded and determined, with a takeno-prisoners attitude...
...Term Limits and others have several parallel strategies...
...The modern term limits campaign won its first initiative in 1990...
...It forced a vote in the House in March 1995 and won a majority of the vote, though not the two-thirds it needed...
...T he decision seemed particularly odd in light of some of Clinton's own behavior as president...
...Statement One had the candidate promise to vote "for that candidate for United States Senator in Congress who has received the highest number of the people's votes for that position at the election next preceding the election of a Senator in Congress, without regard to my individual preference...
...On no other issue do Washington and the American people have such divergent views...
...Accompanied by just a few Secret Service agents, he often ran away from the motorcade that always accompanies the president...
...But they're not...
...That serves one rationale for term limits: unstacking the deck that has favored incumbents...
...Opponents argue the reform would give power to lobbyists and congressional staff—but those same lobbyists and staffers are the very people opposing term limits most volubly...
...Until an amendment is passed, all candidates will be asked their position on term limits—as they now are asked about abortion, taxes, and gun control...
...Another time Clinton was jogging up Pennsylvania Avenue when some nut, yelling that his father was an Arkansas chicken farmer, ran right up to the president and jogged next to him for several yards until Secret Service agents blocked his path...
...Last year seven other states joined the ranks, and Colorado shortened its limits...
...Passage of the 17th Amendment took from 1893 to 1912, just shy of two decades...
...No need for a gun...
...passed them in 1994 with 62 percent of the vote...
...M any issues elicit strong opinion-poll support that fades away when voters are actually asked to cast a ballot...
...The activists of the lobbying group U.S...
...Former House speaker Tom Foley, a longtime target of the term-limits movement, held a press conference to announce, "Term limits is dead...
...It is here that the new GOP Congress has already won half the term-limits battle...
...In New York City, Ronald Lauder ran a campaign to limit the terms of the mayor and city councilors...
...But this time, after the security review, Clinton listened to the Secret Service and the terror-mongers, and together they turned the White House into a besieged presidential palace...
...Term Limits have helped to pass them in twenty states for state legislators (see chart opposite), and forty states already have term limits on their governors...
...In his first months in office, he insisted on taking long, Little Rock-style jogs through Washington...
...In 1993, the House Republican Caucus voted to limit the time that any Republican could serve as a ranking committee member to six years...
...In a 5-4 decision, the Court invalidated a provision of the Arkansas constitution, adopted by initiative, limiting senators to two six-year terms, and House members to three two-year terms...
...If the Democrats were to re-take the House, they could repeal these limits, but they would pay a heavy price in public outrage...
...Even Washington, D.C...
...Opposed by labor unions, municipal workers, the New York Times, and all politicians, limits won with 59 percent of the vote...
...A Senate vote is promised this year...
...term limits support has held up under fire...
...Term Limits Foundation...
...This is no longer a debate over whether term limits are a good idea," wrote Norman Leahy, the director of the U.S...
...This is now a question of when term limits will be adopted as part of the Constitution...
...The House of Representatives voted two-thirds for direct senatorial elections as early as 1893, but between 1893 and 1902, the House passed the amendment five times only to see the Senate refuse to allow a vote...
...Term limit proponents have thus already won half the war...
...Or perhaps he believed all those Washington Post stories warning of terrorists in the heartland, angry white men inflamed by the rhetoric of the new Republican majority in Congress...
...as nothing more than a recommendation which I shall be at liberty to wholly disregard if the reason for doing so seems to me to be sufficient...
...Term limits for federal congressmen Grover G. Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...In these twenty-one initiative states, more than 24 million votes were cast for term limits...
...In 1904 Oregon, which had and still has the initiative process, voted three to one to require that candidates for the state legislature sign one of two public statements...
...Term Limits has studied the 17th (direct election of senators) and 19th (women's suffrage) Amendments for ideas on overcoming expected opposition...
...The Senate vote will give activists a target list for the 1996 primaries and November elections...
...All in all, it was astonishingly reckless and dangerous behavior, putting the president in far more danger than he is ever in at the White House...
...To win total victory—a constitutional amendment limiting all representatives to three terms and all senators to two terms—U.S...
...In 1995, they extended the limit to committee chairmen, which may explain why Bill Archer, chairman of the Ways A Limited Future by Grover G. Norquist 58 The American Spectator August 1995 and Means Committee, has moved so quickly to abolish the income tax in favor of a retail sales tax--he will be gone in six years...
...And no Republican leader would come out and say that Clinton was wrong to close off Pennsylvania Avenue...
...were first adopted in Colorado in 1990, through a popular initiative that won 70 percent of the vote...
...The House vote on term limits earlier this year surprised many by exposing Henry Hyde and thirty-five other Republicans as term limits opponents...
...When enough representatives and senators had been elected from states with women voters, they provided the support to pass the national amendment in 1920...
...Yet another time, the president stopped to do a few stretching exercises at a light box on another busy downtown street while nervous agents hovered around and traffic zoomed by...
...In 1992 thirteen more states passed term limits initiatives...
...These were not affected by the Supreme Court decision...
...In the first Oregon election following this new ballot labeling, the state legislature took only twenty minutes to choose two senators who had won earlier popular primaries...
...In 1994, term limit supporters picked up seventy House seats...
...But there's still room for hope...
...Term limits supporters could require all candidates for federal office to have on the ballot, along with their names and party affiliations, a statement saying either, "I promise to serve only three terms," or "I will not promise to serve only three terms...
...Term-limits advocates join property-rights activists, pro-lifers, anti-crime activists, and taxpayer groups in wanting to ensure that the next appointee to the Court respects the Ninth and Tenth Amendments...
...It will undoubtedly take a long time to transform Pennsylvania Avenue into a park...
...He once ran across Constitution Avenue, got caught in traffic, and jogged in place in the middle of the street as cars whizzed by on both sides...
...Activists plan to hold Senate Majority Leader and presidential candidate Bob Dole to his promise of a vote on term limits, something Congress refused to do until Republicans put it in their Contract With America...
Vol. 28 • August 1995 • No. 8
