The lame non-lame duck

Doug Masson weighs in on Mark Souder's pledge to step down from Congress after 12 years and thinks the congressman's reasons for breaking that pledge are lame and self-serving. I've commented on the issue from time to time, including this post from almost a year ago. I can't say I greatly disagree with Doug, though I am philosophically more inclined to agree with Souder on More issues than I do with challenger Tom Hayhurst. I'm not a great fan of term limits, including the Indiana ones on such offices as sheriff and governor; the best term limits are the ones imposed by voters and election time. So Souder should never have even made the pledge. But he did, and a pledge is a pledge.

I think more attention should be paid to why Souder said he was making the pledge -- that people who stay too long in Washington get caught up in the culture of national politics and forget about the real people they are supposedly representing. That is a topic worthy of debate. That does happen -- and I think Souder has probably been somewhat sucked in by the fun of the political process -- but there are also offsetting benefits, such as a legislator with senority who will have more ability to get his district's needs paid attention to.

If the main problem is that people too long in power become insulated from the real world, that is still true, even if redistricting changes the boundaries of the representative's district. Souder's change of heart would be taken more seriously if he said something like, "I was wrong. Being in Washington too long isn't the main problem, and here's why I changed my mind." Otherwise, his protestations sound, well, lame and self-serving.