We already have term limits, and it works fine

     Commissioner Haven Shoemaker and the Carroll County Times are calling for legislation to impose term limits on those who serve as county commissioners.
     This is a no-lose position for the newest commissioner, who was until recently a small-town mayor and who, it might be speculated, has at least speculated on a future as a state legislator or -- what the heck -- governor, or maybe Washington.
     Why not? Congressman Roscoe Bartlett ran on a term limit platform nearly 30 years ago and he's still drawing a government paycheck.
     Almost 100 percent of the politicians I have known who took up the banner for term limits planned to ride the clamor into a long political career.
     Term limits is the periodic buzzword, the occasional  banner lifted by the politically obtuse, innately disaffected and the opportunistic office-seeker. It's a no-lose position for both conniving politicos and nerdy world-savers: Populism sells papers and gets votes. The press always is eager to "me, too!" to any criticism of political power; it's in the genetic makeup of those who seek a line of work in which you can write about things without having to know too much about them. We tend to be enamored with the romance of tilting at windmills in our dented armor -- or rumpled pants and wrinkled shirts.
     I speak from experience.
     Journalists are people who might have been teachers but lack the self-discipline and, often, the grades, to get a job on a college campus. In my life in the work, a significant number of journalistic colleagues were the ones who had been kicked out of college at least once, changed majors half a dozen times (having started out in some esoteric pursuit like Ancient History, or the literary significance of punk rock, or the decline of creative writing in a consumer-centered world), wound up graduating with a degree that has no bearing on modern self-support, and take part-time work tending bar and writing as a free-lancer for a weekly until they can find something to pay for a newer old Honda.
     Then there were the few dinosaurs, like myself, who wanted to write novels, but never even went to college, except night classes at University of Whatsis, while they ground away years running down car crashes, trailer park knifings and drug busts. Oh, yeah, and while you're at it, cover the school board, county courts, and local government, 4H fair and installation of Job's Daughters.
      My point is, even politicians who call for term limits have little intention of limiting their own political careers. Hardly a model to follow. Newspapers don't like politicians who serve for more than a few weeks, if that long, so don't look for an example there, either.
     The wisdom is already in place, and so is the system to employ it.
      Elected officials serve one term at a time. The voters decide how many terms any one representative can serve. Some might be worth electing two, three or more times. It's up to the person in office to decide, first of all, if they feel up to returning to office. But the final decision is up to the people who cast votes.
     And in the end, the voters get what they want -- or at least deserve.