Decade ? No. 6 years is usually the curdling point for the good guys. Some last longer, some don’t even last a year.
Problem, however, is that term limits for just the elected officials isn’t a panacea. The government workers (protected by unions and Civil Service, a good idea that turned rotten), the staffers and behind-the-scenes people are just as bad if not more so. A revolving door of elected officials would reduce them to simple puppets.
In places like California, where term limits was enacted in the ‘90s to run out tyrants like King Willie Brown, it only worked to the benefit of the GOP for all of a year or two and with the 1996 elections, it was all over for responsible governance and fresh faces and ideas. A revolving door of puppets for powerful big gubmint interest groups that rubber stamp whatever they want, and corrupt as hell. Remove one and they’re replaced with another. It’s become a feudal third world $hithole as a result.
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.