John Sides says "I’ve never understood the appeal of term limits. (And I think many political scientists would agree.) Who provides the expertise when the legislators are only in office for a few years?" Well, no one (or, technically, staffs, but in the minds of voters, no one). This is part and parcel of our culture's weird belief that governance is not a profession that requires expertise, and that, in fact, expertise is to be distrusted, because expertise means you've been corrupted by virtue of continued presence in Washington (or Springfield, or Albany, or Sacramento). But it's a little crazy. I don't want citizen surgeons and I don't want citizen legislators. The country is too big, and too complex, for the happy fiction that governance is a function of character rather than skill.
