Term limits. Or vote them out next time. Part of the reason the Constitution writers made 2 and 6 year terms, to try to force the House to be responsive to public opinion and the Senate resistant to GIGO cycling of proposed bills.

Of course that's all moot with the current 'ideology above sanity', but that's the game today.

Term limits.

Term limits is one of those ideas that sound good, but is actually bad.

Think about it: why would you want to have lawmakers automatically removed from office after they have gained significant experience in writing and lobbying for legislation and serving in various committees? Terminating someone when they are at the height of their productivity doesn't make any sense, either for business or for government.

Furthermore, the only thing term limits would do is further encourage the "revolving doors" pattern. Every politician would optimize their legislative careers for their post-term private sector gigs, rather than try their hardest to continue doing a good job so as to get re-elected.

>why would you want to have lawmakers automatically removed from office after they have gained significant experience in writing and lobbying for legislation and serving in various committees?

Because passed laws should be about the will of the people. Not how deep the tentacles of a particular politician go. The only reason it takes so long for politicians to climb those ranks and gain power is due to the long line of lifers in front of them. 8 years is more than enough for Presidents to significantly impact the country. There is no reason a senator or a representative needs more than that.

>Every politician would optimize their legislative careers for their post-term private sector gigs

They do this already. The lack of term limits just allows them to continue amassing power and favors to make it more lucrative.

>rather than try their hardest to continue doing a good job so as to get re-elected.

You fundamentally misunderstand what the point of a member of congress. They aren't supposed to be professional politicians. They are supposed to be normal people from each state doing their duty representing that state. It's why congress isn't a full-time position.

> Terminating someone when they are at the height of their productivity

Unfortunately for that rosy abstract view, 'gained significant experience' usually means 'entrenched in the party leadership and completely sold to special interests'. When votes wield less influence over a legislator than those who have bought them, they need to go and make room for someone less likely to get bought.

Let the people make examples of the most heavily bought, and there's a snowball's chance we could get back to having representatives again, instead of corporate interest peddlers.

And shorter terms, with less chance to get entrenched in influence peddling, makes that revolving door less enticing for all sides.

Representatives don't write legislation, that's what their staff is for, and experience is a valuable assent in a staffer. The longer a poltician's term lasts, the more they trend towards being the governments representative to the people instead of the people's representative in government.

I sympathize, but the ability to recall your vote, i.e. unelect, at any time would make your attitude towards your initial vote less serious and elections/unelections would cycle too fast to govern. Sometimes a bad government can be better than no government. Burden of citizenship.

> the ability to recall your vote, i.e. unelect, at any time would make your attitude towards your initial vote less serious

How do you know that about me?

> elections/unelections would cycle too fast to govern

Ok, that may be so, but without trying it we'll never know. You could implement this at the municipal level first, see how it works, iron out the kinks if any are found and then scale it up bit by bit. The whole idea that a politician can say anything and only be held accountable many years later is a pretty big flaw, possibly bigger than the flaw of having multiple election cycles until we find people that do keep their word.

>How do you know that about me?

Presumably you are human, no? The ability to undo a decision at any time significantly reduces the impact of the decision. How much effort do you spend deciding what to eat for lunch? How much effort would you spend if it's what you're going to eat for lunch every day for the next 4 years?

> Ok, that may be so, but without trying it we'll never know

Of course we can. Take the US dominant two-party system, and look at the approval rating for politicians. Look at how many times it crosses the 50% line. Some would only be in office for a few weeks before being replaced, but then who would replace them? What if the previous candidate has a better job already? Does The Party now get to pick someone? How about when approval ratings move back and forth between 48% and 52% over the course of just a few weeks, multiple times?

You've got that backwards. With the people that voted for them the bulk of the politicians are still happy. A recalled vote would simply deduct one from the result as set and would leave the rest of the results in place until the balance point was reached. That would not be something that would 'go back and forth', you could only do that once and when the withdrawn votes balance out (which typically for both parties would normally happen at roughly the same rate) would you call a new election.

So that would not happen nearly as often as you might think, and would likely require a fairly major turn of opinion before it would have any effect.

The two party system by the way is very much broken, as is the influence of money in American politics but that's a completely different - and local - affair.

What distinguishes involuntary falsehoods (e.g., misquoting someone unintentionally, or basing an argument on data later proved to be false) from lies in this case? How would you go about enacting this? I think this is a pipe dream, and not something that can (or should) be implemented.

And as for "one way street" voting... that's because voting is an ephemeral act, not a sustained one. Your vote happened in the past and had an effect. You can't change your vote later and suddenly someone else is elected.

> What distinguishes involuntary falsehoods (e.g., misquoting someone unintentionally, or basing an argument on data later proved to be false) from lies in this case?

Nothing, so therefore you would have to do some homework. The news cycle might slow down a bit and I'm not sure that would be a bad thing.

> How would you go about enacting this?

A law would be a good start, possibly one with a bunch of criteria that would make 'false positives' a rarity so that at least initially the stick would be reserved for the most offending cases. If that works well then you can adjust to taste.

> I think this is a pipe dream, and not something that can (or should) be implemented.

That's ok, it is perfectly ok for different people to have different attitudes towards such ideas. But it's novel in the sense that it would create a strong incentive for the press to be cautious rather than jumping on every hype wagon that rolled along.

> And as for "one way street" voting... that's because voting is an ephemeral act, not a sustained one.

Yes, and I propose to change that.

> Your vote happened in the past and had an effect. You can't change your vote later and suddenly someone else is elected.

Not right now, but that too is not set in stone and in theory could be changed. A lot of the things we do and find normal are only that because they are how things are done today. That does not mean they can't be changed.

> What distinguishes involuntary falsehoods (e.g., misquoting someone unintentionally, or basing an argument on data later proved to be false) from lies in this case?

For the vast majority of people (even those who consider themselves apolitical), it will be how much they like the politician in question. My side? Definitely just being misquoted, or taken out of context, or an honest mistake. The other side? A crazed partisan intentionally manipulating the system, a terrible excuse for a human being, and should be jailed before being summarily executed.