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Term Limits


WOC strongly favors term limits. Lord Acton observed: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Was a truer sentence ever uttered?

Political office should be a temporary assignment–not a lifetime appointment. Unfortunately, given rampant gerrymandering and the advantages of incumbency, many elections are tantamount to lifetime appointments. In American Government and Politics, Robert Singh notes:

The most striking, distinctive and persistent fact about elections is this: incumbents win. That is, those politicians in office who seek re-election rarely fail. Turnover in Congress is due more to retirement than defeat at the polls. Such has been the ‘incumbent advantage’ over recent decades that President Reagan once quipped that there had been more turnover in the Soviet Union’s (famously geriatric) Politburo than in the US Congress during the 1980s.

WOC advocates throwing the bums–Republican or Democrat–out of office before they start naming buildings and bridges after themselves.

Is it coincidence the longest serving senator in history–Robert Byrd–has at least 32 public works named after him?

  1. Robert C. Byrd Academic and Technology Center
  2. Robert C. Byrd addition to the lodge at Oglebay Park, Wheeling
    Byrd Aerospace Technology Center
  3. Robert C. Byrd Bridge between Huntington and Chesapeake, Ohio
  4. Robert C. Byrd Cancer Research Center
  5. Robert C. Byrd Clinical Addition to the veteran’s hospital in Huntington
  6. Robert C. Byrd Community Center, Pine Grove
  7. Robert C. Byrd Community Center in the naval station, Sugar Grove
  8. Robert C. Byrd Drive, from Beckley to Sophia (Byrd’s hometown)
  9. Robert C. Byrd Expressway, U.S. 22 near Weirton
  10. Robert C. Byrd Federal Building
  11. Robert C. Byrd Federal Courthouse
  12. Robert C. Byrd Freeway
  13. Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope
  14. Robert C. Byrd Hardwood Technologies Center, near Princeton
  15. Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center of West Virginia
  16. Robert C. Byrd High school in Bridgeport
  17. Robert C. Byrd Highway
  18. Robert C. Byrd Hilltop Office Complex, Mineral County
  19. Robert C. Byrd Honors Scholarships
  20. Robert C. Byrd Industrial Park, Hardy County
  21. Robert C. Byrd Institute in Charleston
  22. Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing
  23. Robert C. Byrd Library and Robert C. Byrd Learning Resource Center
  24. Robert C. Byrd Life Long Learning Center
  25. Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam
  26. Robert C. Byrd National Technology Transfer Center
  27. Robert C. Byrd Rural Health Center
  28. Robert C. Byrd Scholastic Recognition Award
  29. Byrd Science Center, Shepherd University
  30. Robert C. Byrd Technology Center at Alderson-Broaddus College
  31. Robert C. Byrd United Technical Center
  32. Robert C. Byrd Visitor Center at Harpers Ferry National Historic Park

Or coincidence that Alsaka Senator Ted Stevens–#7 on the all-time list–is another chronic abuser? As the National Review Online editorializes, “It might be easier to count the public buildings in Alaska that aren’t named after him…” These public works projects are lasting monuments to Senators Byrd and Stevens’ ability to deliver the pork. But to anyone outside of West Virginia and Alaska, that’s a damning criticism–not a compliment.

Why should a sitting politician have anything named after himself? WOC has no problem with honoring retired and dead politicians, but opposes giving sitting incumbents free advertising.