Some great insights on the matter of term limits. Definitely food for thought. Thanks!

I got nothing useful done in my first two years; it took that long to get some reasonable idea of how to actually get things done. Actually, I hadn’t made very much progress by the end of my first term. By then, though, I had found out how to manage the long-term council employees…

Most of my most useful work came in my second term and in the first two years of my third. By then I was getting tired and stale on the one hand and also far too attracted to the status, rather than the prospect of solving problems for my electorate. I then took a rest for four years, got elected again, and this time resigned halfway through my second term, because I just didn’t have the vision and the energy to push things through which I felt were needed any more.

It would have been exceptionally easy to stay there for the status and to be very little use to the voters. I’m really very happy (nay, smug) that I made the decision to quit.

Everything I know from fellow politicians at somewhat higher levels of government indicates that the learning curve is longer and steeper at higher levels, but the fatigue and the insidious allure of power work to much the same timescale. My instinct is that no-one should do the job for more than about 10 years without a break, and that it wouldn’t be a bad thing if they were compelled to do that. The decision was a lot closer than I’d have liked.

Very thoughtless on the part of those who wrote the legislation. Or more likely they let lobbyists for large companies write the legislation with the intent of shutting out the small producers.

Democracy is certainly messy, and my own leanings lead me to believe it is less messy when Government does many small things rather than trying to do one big thing. I think people would be more comfortable with individual initiatives to solve the various health care problems which can be debated and modified based on that problem’s individual characteristics. And there are many of us very concerned about the unintended consequences of sweeping legislation … google “CPSIA” for examples of how a law banning lead in toys can decimate the youth sports industry, impact small toy manufacturers and even libraries and thrift shops.

I’m not sure Congress is smart enough to handle this for us.