No, you really, really don’t. Term limits are a bad idea that sounds like a good idea, that’s why they keep popping up. But the problem is, legislation is actually a complicated job, and experience matters a lot.
With term limits, there is a constant churn of new representatives who don’t know the ropes, and the older ones are constantly being termed out as they’ve accumulated some experience. As a result, there’s a massive loss of institutional and individual legislative experience, which is a bad thing. As another result, it’s the unelected staff, as well as lobbyists, who become the well of experience, increasing their influence over the elected representatives. And for a third result, the knowledge that you’ll be termed out whether you do a good job or a shit job, whether you look out for your constituents or spend your final term giving payouts to your donors and every industry that’s lobbied to you, makes representatives less accountable and more corrupt. And where do the termed-out representatives move? To no small extent, they become lobbyists, worsening the problem.
Tl;dr: Term limits are not a good idea. They’re superficially appealing, but they don’t actually solve the problems people suggesting them want to solve, and actually make many of those problems worse.
