That’s why you don’t make office ineligibility permanent.
For the Senate two terms - 12 years, then sit out a term before one can return to the Senate. House five terms - 10 years, then sit out two terms (or three!) - 4(6) years before eligibility to return to the House is regained. A uninterrupted decade in DC is enough ! I wish there was some way to force this pretentious professional politician clown posse to go home. Go back and live with your constituents experience the splendor of your governing genius. As a minimum they should be permanently banned from lobbying jobs. Many of these clowns if they had to sit out a few years, get out of the public eye, they’d disappear !
Since we know these “professional politicians” are convinced we can’t live without them. (I mean what would the Kennedys do if they didn’t have voters to bamboozle ? Stay drunk, screw the help & OD maybe !) If there must be professional politicians let them go home and run for governor, state executive offices, mayor, county commissioner & state legislature, maybe even get a job back home (Anywhere !) in the private sector.
No solution is perfect, but I think increasing turnover in Congress is good even if you have to force it. Also from personal experience I think deferring to the “governing wisdom” gained from repeated elected legislative (or executive!) experience is way over rated.
OK, we can agree to disagree here. We both want the same result. I’d like more accountability while in office so the bad ones get thrown out. An ethics committee with teeth run by people not in Congress would be a good start as would mandatory PE at the start of every term with a mental status exam as part of the physical.
It wouldn’t hurt for Congress critters to have to take a basic civics exam to get on the ballot run for office. There are obviously many that have no grasp of our system of Government.