If Term Limits Will Not Work, What Will?

I argued in a recent post that term limits are not the answer to improve American Governance.  In review, here are the arguments against it.

-Experience is important in nearly every job in America.  Why not in politics?
-Term limits could tip the balance of power away from elected officials in favor of un-elected bureaucrats and lobbyists.
-There is no evidence that the states that have term limits have seen improved government.
-Term limits removes a check on the power of the politician.  The office holder is free to do more without the check of having to be elected again.  In other words, you would give a US senator 6 years where he doesn't have to worry one bit about what you think or say about his job.
-People who support politicians financially do not want the risk of a revolution.  They will do all in their power to put a like-minded person in the place of an office-holder who is term-limited out of office.  Gerrymandering also ensures that a like minded person gets elected.

What will work instead?

-Once a person leaves political office, he/she is forever forbidden from being anything other than an adviser to current office holder.  He/She will not be allowed to represent anyone to the current office holder on either a paid or unpaid basis.  In other words, he/she can't become a lobbyist, paid or unpaid.

-End gerrymandering, or the practice of drawing district boundaries to the favor of one party or another.

-Put a citizen's recall mechanism for members of Congress in the US Constitution.  Also, allow members of the House of Representatives and US Senate to be impeached by their state legislatures.

-Put a cap on congressional and presidential salaries and pensions.  Sure, you can serve in Congress for more than 12 years, but you are no longer eligible for pay raises and your salary is capped at that rate except for adjustments for inflation.  This should encourage members of Congress to retire after serving for 12 years.  Also ensure that pensions will cap after 12 years of service.

Perhaps you have other idea?  Let's talk about them.

The Rule of Law and Kim Davis.

This is trying to compare Kim Davis to a Wal-Mart clerk unwilling to sell a man condoms, but there is one big difference.

If a Wal-Mart Clerk refused to sell someone birth control based upon her religious beliefs, she would be fired from her job, and would not go to jail.  Likely, before she applies for the job, she has researched the duties of that job, and researched what the store sells.  If she is uncomfortable with anything the store sells, she probably never even applies to work there.

According to the National Association of Counties, here are the duties of the County Clerk.

1. Recorder of the county, on behalf of the Board of County Commissioners
2. Chief election officer responsible for the administration of elections in the county
3. Clerk of the Probate Court in handling informal proceedings only
4. Miscellaneous duties including those of notary public, administration of oaths, certification of acknowledgements, declarations, instruments and protests.

Do you see what is missing from this list of duties?

As much as I fell for Kim Davis, I must point out that it is not the job of the county clerk to decide who gets a marriage license.  It is simply her job to administer it.  Once the State of Kentucky decides that same-sex marriage is legal, the county clerk has no say in the matter.  It doesn't matter if it was the courts, the legislature or the governor by executive order.  The marriage license is a certification of an instrument.  It's a legal record that the state approves of the union.  The clerk only records the transaction.  Now, let's compare this metaphor, since it was brought up.

It's 1985.  A clerk who has worked at Wal-Mart for many years goes to work one morning to find out that the store will now sell condoms.  As a practicing Roman Catholic, she now finds that she has to sell the condoms.  Therefore, she addresses her supervisor about the matter.  After much discussion, and probably after the store manager consults their legal department, the employee is terminated from her job.  Like the county clerk, it is not the job of the Wal-Mart cashier to decide what the store sells.

Kim Davis was given a way around her religious convictions.  She was told that her deputies could issues the marriage licenses, and that she didn't have to sign any of them.  However, she refused and chose jail instead.  She is now, as I understand, no longer in jail, but awaiting impeachment hearings in the State Legislature.  That is bound to be a contentious hearing, if the state legislature takes up the matter.

But she wasn't the only the only one whose refusal to compromise caused the problem.  Rowan County Kentucky is only 286 square miles large.  There are six other county seats nearby.  The couple that wanted the licence only had to drive, at most, an hour to another county seat to gain one. One difference between people like me, and people who are unwilling to compromise is that I could drive an hour to get a marriage license in another county.  Out west, there is a good chance it will take LONGER than an hour to get to your county seat and get a marriage license.  Here in the southern part of Salt Lake County, in traffic, it could take an hour to get to ANY county seat.

Therefore, I have a hard time empathizing with anyone involved in this matter, no matter how I feel about same-sex marriage.

In the long run, people think that Kim Davis is a martyr in this debate.  That is not true.  She is only a pawn.  Both sides have bigger agendas than this.  But I do feel that if a county clerk can suffer any other consequence for not issuing marriage licenses other than the forfeiture of her job, then this country is truly in trouble.  Not simply because of same-sex marriage in and of itself, but the way that the issue has divided the country, and the way that the two sides in the debate attempt to one-up each-other.  When the judge sent her to jail, he made her a political prisoner.  We have done this in the United States, but we shouldn't be proud of it.  And it is something we should NOT do.  Not matter how you feel about the same-sex marriage debate, this was the wrong thing to do and the wrong way to react.  If you are for same-sex marriage, would it be any more fair and any more right if the tables were turned?  Let's pretend that same-sex marriage is not legal, and a judge sends a county clerk to jail for issuing a license to a same-sex couple.  Does that still make it the right decision?   Perhaps he can order her suspended, into an unpaid leave of absence from her duties until impeachment proceedings, according to the laws of the state.  But prison?  That is going to far.

Perhaps proponents of same-sex marriage should realize that not all of the United States is ready to accept it, especially in the back-woods counties of Kentucky, and they should give the issue some time to settle before county clerks are arrested and jailed.  Perhaps opponents of same-sex marriage should realize that it is now the law of the land and should act accordingly.  As conservatives, we use the rule of law to justify the deportation of illegal immigrants.  We shouldn't be selective about the rule of law.  It should still be our friend, even now.  The reason this issue is dividing us conservatives now, is because the rule of law isn't working in our favor, or the way we THINK it should.  Today, the rule of law says that Kim Davis is wrong.  We can believe in the rule of law, and not believe in same-sex marriage.  And we should also trust that God will sort it all out in the end.