OPINION:
Sen. Ben Cardin, Maryland Democrat, this week announced he was not going to run for a fourth term, deciding, one supposes, that being in public office for a mere 56 years is enough.
You read that right. Mr. Cardin started back in 1967 in the Maryland House of Delegates when he was 24 years old. He’s been on the public payroll essentially his entire adult life.
The good news is that he is a towering legislator who has made the United States greater both by his presence and by his string of legislative achievements that have led the way to greater progress and a more prosperous, secure nation.
Just kidding. Mr. Cardin has been pretty much an extra over the course of his career. Like most long-term members, he has been a reliable vote for more spending, for killing the citizens of whichever unlucky nation the leader of his party wanted to kill, and for whatever else his party could dream up.
In the company town that is Washington, he has been a company man.
Unfortunately, he is not alone. The plague of the professional officeholder is widespread, and it contributes to our current problems in all kinds of ways. If you have been the custodian of the office breakroom for 40 years, you are probably going to resist all efforts to get rid of the breakroom, or move the company’s office altogether, or do anything that impinges on the role in life that you have created.
Pick a random senator, and you will probably find someone who has been there too long. Party or region doesn’t matter.
Sen. Chuck Grassley has been in the Senate since 1980. Before that, he was in the House for three terms; before that, there were 16 years in the Iowa Legislature, so altogether, about 64 years on the public payroll. Other than making Americans buy ethanol (which they neither need nor want), the accomplishment list is pretty thin.
How about Sen. Patty Murray, who won her first U.S. Senate race in 1992 after serving for four years in the Washington state Senate? She just won her sixth term, despite the fact that during the campaign, she was hard-pressed to name a single accomplishment over her 30 years in the Senate. By the time it is all over, she’ll have at least 40 years on the public payroll.
Finally, consider the case of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who refuses to leave the Senate even though, at 89, she can’t even show up to punch the clock anymore. Her absence means that the Senate Judiciary Committee cannot forward judicial nominations to the Senate floor.
The situation has become so bad that some of her fellow Californians have insisted she resign. One can hardly blame them. In what other line of human endeavor, apart from teaching college students, is one given what amounts to lifetime tenure? In Mrs. Feinstein’s case, she first jumped on the public payroll 54 years ago in San Francisco.
It seems obvious that at this point in the republic, we need to do something to alter the electoral physics that provides too much advantage to those who are comfortable staying in one place and doing one thing until they drop dead.
At a minimum, we need to start the conversation on how best to avoid the inevitable systemic sclerosis that results from having “representatives” of the people who have not worked or lived among the people for decades.
• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, co-hosts “The Unregulated Podcast.” He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House.
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