Perhaps!
But changing the Senate term length starts to do violence to the Constitution. I see nothing wrong with rewarding a 2nd term if a good job was done. You will never completely rid yourself of the professional politician all you can do is try to control and direct him. The key is getting them out of power for awhile and somewhere else. Like go home!
The California GOP hasn’t had any leadership worth a warm bucket of spit since Reagan. So I am not surprised they missed their opportunity.
You can’t go back to a complete spoils system where you fire everyone every change of administration there has to be continuity and institutional memory. So you have to have a professional civil service, the problem is how to get there and how to keep apolitical. First step is decertify the government employee union, unlike California it can be done at the federal level with an executive order since that’s what allowed it. (Thanks JFK even FDR thought it was a bad idea!) In California (and other states!) it would require legislation much much harder to do. The second problem (and this is a hard problem!) stop using the civil service for social engineering purposes. The minute you do that the “hue & cry” of racism, sexism and every other type of “ism” will be all you hear. Go back to exams for hiring and maybe even promotions. (The Chinese Mandarin system kept Chinese culture alive for 1000s of years, they were hired and promoted based on exams testing history & literature knowledge. Us doing something like that would be better then the “make believe” hiring & promotion system we now have!) A civil service should be conservative because it has to maintain the base line.
I am sorry for what has happened to California, Brown let the initial “poison” into the system & culture with his policies in his first term. Californians seem to like it, they gave him another go at it! The Republicans there are super me-too’ers. (Socialism yes Me- too!) California is a special case the only thing that will fix it is California secession followed by armed federal conquest and a reconstruction which will break it up into several states.
I favor recall for U.S. Senators (little point in doing that for House members, since after a year in they’re already in the midst of their next primary season), since they’ve become a very serious problem.
Spoils was the best in my estimation, because you had your people in for 4-8 years and out they went (with only truly exceptional individuals kept on beyond that). No taxpayer-funded bennies out their butts. These folks are totally insulated from reality and getting rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Worst of all, they are perpetually motivated to vote for larger and larger government to protect their jobs and benefits. The Founding Fathers didn’t even want these people voting.
You’re absolutely right that there shouldn’t be government worker unions, period.