What Part of Yes
I guess my question now to this legislature is, what part of ‘yes’ don’t you understand?” That’s the question Louisiana state Senator Jay Dardenne had for colleagues who had wanted to repeal Louisiana’s popular term limits law.
Fortunately, the career politicians failed to get their way. “The people by 76 percent said they wanted it,” Dardenne reminded his fellow senators. “Now we, those who are affected by it, are saying ‘We know better than you. You are gravely in error, how can you possibly not want us to represent you in perpetuity.’”
Just a couple weeks earlier a senate panel had voted for a constitutional amendment to repeal the Louisiana term limits law. But it couldn’t get past the full state senate, where it was killed by a vote 25 to 14. I hope you’ll forgive me if I suspect that many of those 25 senators who voted no did so more out of pragmatic politics than any great matter of principle. Senator Dardenne is the exception, not the rule.
Certainly the sponsor of the repeal bill, Senator Charles Jones, remains as unrepentant as he is unimaginative about why term limits are bad, bad. “There is no substitution for institutional knowledge,” Jones says. “Like any other profession you get it by time. You don’t guess on it, don’t get it by osmosis,” he said. And that real-world experience stuff that many outsiders talk about? Well, it takes twenty or thirty years before you can really begin to shed that acquaintance with the real world and how it works. Right, Senator?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
