Two Terms. That Is It. That Is All.
I am done pretending lifetime political careers are a healthy feature of American democracy.
Two terms.
School board member? Two terms.
Mayor? Two terms.
Sheriff? Two terms.
County supervisor? Two terms.
State representative? Two terms.
State senator? Two terms.
Governor? Two terms.
United States representative? Two terms.
United States senator? Two terms.
President? We already figured this one out. Two elected terms.
Where judges face elections or retention elections, give them two full terms and send them back into private life when those terms expire.
I do not care whether a term lasts two years, four years, six years, eight years or ten years. I do not care whether the incumbent has an R, D or I beside the name. I do not care whether that politician is someone I supported, someone I opposed, or someone whose politics match mine almost perfectly.
Two terms means two terms.
Public office is supposed to be public service. Somewhere along the way, America allowed it to become a profession, an identity, a fundraising enterprise, a family brand and, in some cases, something disturbingly close to an inheritance.
That needs to end.
The debate has become especially relevant in Iowa during the 2026 governor’s race. Rob Sand has proposed limiting Iowa legislators to twelve years. That is a start, and I give him credit for putting the subject before voters. I simply think twelve years is far too generous.
My position requires considerably less arithmetic.
You get elected twice.
Then somebody else gets a chance.
The Point Is Not Punishment. It Is Preventing Political Entrenchment.
I support term limits for a reason far more serious than simply being sick of looking at the same politicians for decades.
Long incumbencies can create structural advantages that become extraordinarily difficult for challengers to overcome. Name recognition accumulates. Fundraising networks mature. Relationships with donors, lobbyists, party organizations, political action committees and advocacy organizations deepen. Staff networks become permanent. Committee seniority creates institutional leverage. Potential challengers may decide that taking on a deeply entrenched incumbent is not worth the financial or political risk.
None of that proves that a longtime officeholder is corrupt.
That distinction needs to remain clear.
A person can serve thirty years without accepting a bribe, committing a crime or consciously betraying constituents. The concern is broader than criminal corruption. The concern is what prolonged incumbency does to the relationship between the citizen and the officeholder.
An elected official is supposed to arrive in government representing people.
After twenty, thirty or forty years, the political ecosystem surrounding that official can become enormous. There are donors to satisfy, party leaders to accommodate, lobbyists who have known the office for decades, organizations issuing endorsements, committees determining assignments, industries pressing policy positions and campaign professionals thinking about the next election before the current one has finished.
That environment creates incentives.
Money creates access. Relationships create access. Institutional seniority creates leverage. Political organizations learn which offices to call and which lawmakers can move legislation.
Ordinary constituents do not have Washington lobbying offices.
The grandmother trying to understand why her prescription costs so much does not have a government-affairs department.
The Iowa farmer struggling with input costs does not necessarily have a six-figure lobbying contract.
The disabled person trying to survive on a fixed income does not have a political action committee.
The parent worried about a school does not have a team of attorneys drafting proposed legislation.
Large corporations, trade associations, ideological organizations, unions, professional associations and wealthy political organizations frequently do.
That imbalance exists whether a politician has served two years or forty. Long tenure can make those institutional relationships deeper and more valuable, however, particularly when seniority gives an officeholder greater influence over committees, legislation and appropriations.
Term limits do not eliminate special-interest influence.
They prevent the same relationships from occupying the same elected office indefinitely.
That is an important difference.
Chuck Grassley Is Exactly Why I Want Term Limits
If somebody wants an Iowa example of why I believe political careers need an expiration date, I do not have to look very far.
Chuck Grassley was born September 17, 1933.
He was first elected to the Iowa Legislature in 1958.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was president.
Grassley won election to the United States House in 1974 and entered Congress in January 1975. He won election to the United States Senate in 1980 and took office there in January 1981.
He has been in Congress continuously ever since.
Read those dates again.
- 1958.
- 1959.
- 1960.
This is not public service followed by retirement.
This is nearly an entire adult lifetime spent holding elected office.
Grassley is 92 years old as I write this in August 2026. He will turn 93 in September. His current Senate term does not expire until January 2029.
And according to Federal Election Commission records, Grassley is already listed as a candidate in Iowa’s 2028 Senate election. His authorized campaign committee continues reporting fundraising and expenditures.
If he runs in November 2028, he will be 95 years old.
Ninety-five.
I want to be precise here. My objection is not that a 95-year-old American should be legally prohibited from seeking public office solely on account of age. I do not support replacing term limits with an arbitrary age ceiling.
If an Iowan first runs for the Senate at 80 and voters elect that person twice, that person should receive the same two terms everybody else receives.
The problem with Chuck Grassley is not simply the year on his birth certificate.
It is the astonishing amount of time he has already occupied elected government.
Grassley was elected to public office before Alaska and Hawaii became states.
He entered Congress during the Ford administration.
He entered the Senate when Jimmy Carter was president.
A child born during Grassley’s first Senate campaign could now be approaching retirement age.
At some point, enough is enough.
Actually, we passed “enough” several exits ago.
Grassley’s official Senate biography calls him the longest-serving United States senator in Iowa history. It presents his seniority and experience as giving Iowa an influential place at the policymaking table.
That is the traditional argument for keeping politicians indefinitely.
I think it proves my point.
If Iowa’s influence in Washington depends upon keeping one human being in the Senate for nearly half a century, something is badly wrong with the institution.
A Senate seat belongs to approximately 3.2 million Iowans.
It does not belong to Chuck Grassley.
It does not belong to the Republican Party.
It does not belong to the Grassley family.
And it does not automatically pass to another Grassley when Chuck Grassley eventually leaves.
That last issue deserves attention.
Chuck Grassley’s grandson, Pat Grassley, has served in the Iowa House since 2007 and has been speaker of the Iowa House since 2020. Political observers have discussed him for years as a possible successor to his grandfather in the United States Senate. The Washington Post reported in 2025 that Pat Grassley was widely viewed as a likely successor when the Senate seat eventually opens.
Pat Grassley has disputed the idea that he has been groomed from childhood to inherit his grandfather’s Senate seat. That deserves to be included in any fair account.
Good.
Then let Iowa have a genuinely open election whenever that seat becomes vacant.
Let Pat Grassley run if he wants.
Let other Republicans run.
Let Democrats run.
Let independents run.
Let voters decide among them without anyone treating the surname attached to the current senator as a title deed.
We do not have hereditary seats in the United States Senate.
We do not have dukes of Iowa.
We do not have earls of Butler County.
We do not have princes waiting for grandpa’s Senate office to become available.
And contrary to some increasingly monarchical fantasies floating through American politics, we do not have kings.
Nobody designates a successor to an elected federal office.
The people elect one.
Political families are free to participate in democracy like every other family. What they should not receive is a presumption that public office naturally passes from one generation to another.
Chuck Grassley’s career is exactly the kind of career a two-term constitutional limit would make impossible.
I think that would be healthy for Iowa.
I think it would be healthy for America.
Experience Is Valuable. Forty Years of Incumbency Is Not a Job Requirement.
The standard defense of longtime politicians is experience.
Of course experience matters.
That does not mean unlimited tenure follows logically from it.
A surgeon needs experience. A judge needs experience. A teacher needs experience. An engineer needs experience. A farmer needs experience. A prosecutor needs experience. A military officer needs experience.
We do not conclude from that fact that one particular individual must occupy one particular position for forty years.
Government should preserve institutional knowledge through professional staff, archives, legislative research agencies, competent civil servants, counsel, committee records and transparent procedures.
A legislature should never function like an old family business where only Uncle Chuck knows where everything is stored.
If an institution loses its ability to function when one politician leaves, the institution has failed.
And there is another side to experience that politicians rarely advertise.
Experience can produce expertise.
It can produce complacency too.
Experience can teach a lawmaker how government works.
It can teach a lawmaker how to work the system.
Experience can create valuable relationships.
It can create relationships that become more important than the people back home.
Experience can make an elected official effective.
It can make an elected official extraordinarily difficult to challenge.
Longevity is not automatically virtue.
Sometimes longevity is simply longevity.
Incumbency Changes the Competition Before Election Day Arrives
Critics of term limits often respond with a deceptively simple argument: voters already have term limits. They are called elections.
I understand the argument.
I reject it.
An incumbent and a challenger frequently do not enter an election on equal footing.
The incumbent may begin with years of name recognition. The incumbent may possess a mature fundraising operation, donor lists, campaign infrastructure and relationships with party officials. The incumbent receives routine media coverage simply by performing the duties of office. Constituents may know the incumbent’s name without being able to name a challenger.
Longtime federal lawmakers can accumulate committee assignments and seniority that become part of their reelection argument: keep me here, voters are told, or the state loses influence.
That creates a self-reinforcing system.
Stay in office long enough to acquire seniority.
Use seniority as an argument for staying in office.
Accumulate more seniority.
Then warn voters that replacing you would cost them the seniority that only exists because they kept reelecting you.
That is not an argument for unlimited tenure.
It is an argument for changing how Congress distributes institutional authority.
Committee leadership should not function as a loyalty reward for surviving Washington longer than everybody else.
Term Limits Can Reduce One Form of Influence and Create Another
There is an inconvenient fact supporters of term limits should acknowledge.
Term limits can have unintended consequences.
Research examining states with legislative term limits has found evidence that influence can shift away from legislators and toward governors, administrative agencies, lobbyists and interest groups when elected lawmakers have less institutional experience.
That is a serious concern.
A lobbyist who has worked a state capitol for twenty-five years can possess vastly greater procedural knowledge than a freshman legislator who knows he will be gone within several years.
The answer is not allowing the legislator to stay for thirty years.
The answer is constructing term limits intelligently.
Professional nonpartisan legislative staff should preserve institutional knowledge.
Legislative research agencies should be properly funded.
Lobbying disclosure should be far stronger.
Revolving-door restrictions should prevent lawmakers from leaving office on Friday and becoming paid lobbyists on Monday.
Campaign-finance disclosure should allow citizens to see who is financing political careers.
Legislative language supplied by outside organizations should be traceable.
Committee processes should be transparent.
Ethics enforcement should have actual teeth.
Term limits are one reform within a much larger democratic reform agenda.
They are not political insecticide. Spray them around the Capitol and corruption does not magically die.
What they accomplish is simpler.
Nobody gets to stay forever.
The President Gets Two Elections. Explain Why a Senator Needs Eight.
America has already accepted the central principle behind term limits.
The Twenty-Second Amendment limits a person to being elected president twice, with a separate constitutional provision covering someone who assumes part of another president’s term.
Think about the office we decided to limit.
President of the United States.
Commander in chief.
Head of the executive branch.
The person who signs or vetoes federal legislation.
The person who nominates Supreme Court justices and other federal judges.
The person directing American foreign policy and overseeing an enormous federal administration.
We looked at that office and decided two elections were enough.
Yet Americans are supposed to believe a United States senator requires thirty-six or forty-two or forty-eight years to become sufficiently effective?
I am not buying it.
If eight years can be sufficient for the presidency, twelve years is more than sufficient for a senator.
And if Congress thinks representatives need longer than four total years under a two-term rule, then amend House terms from two years to four.
I am willing to have that discussion.
I am not willing to accept indefinite reelection as the default simply because that is what we inherited.
Local Government Needs Term Limits Too
I do not want this reform stopping at Washington.
Political entrenchment can happen in a county courthouse, city hall or school district.
A sheriff exercises enormous governmental authority. Sheriffs can oversee deputies, jails, detention practices, law-enforcement policies and substantial public budgets.
Two terms.
School-board members make decisions involving children, teachers, curricula, facilities, taxes and district policy.
Two terms.
Mayors and city councils shape zoning, development, policing budgets, infrastructure, housing and taxation.
Two terms.
County officials can oversee elections, prosecution, taxation, records and public services.
Two terms.
The smaller scale of an office does not make concentrated political influence harmless.
In some communities, longstanding personal relationships can make challenging an incumbent particularly difficult. Everybody knows everybody. Business networks overlap with political networks. Donors know officeholders personally. Local media may have covered the same officials for years.
Again, none of this automatically means corruption.
It means democratic institutions benefit from periodic disruption.
Somebody new should occasionally walk into the room.
Judges Are Different, but Permanent Occupancy Still Makes No Sense
Judges require a distinction.
Federal judges are appointed, not elected, and Article III provides constitutional protection for their tenure. Changing that system would require constitutional action and raises issues beyond ordinary electoral term limits.
State judicial systems vary considerably.
Iowa uses a merit-selection and retention-election system. Iowa Supreme Court justices serve eight-year terms between retention elections, and other Iowa judges operate under terms established by state law and the Iowa Constitution.
My two-term principle would apply to judicial retention too.
Two eight-year terms on the Iowa Supreme Court means sixteen years.
That is not exactly being rushed out the door.
Judicial independence can be protected without treating judicial office as something one person should occupy for most of an adult lifetime.
Political Dynasties Should Make Americans Uncomfortable
The Grassley example raises a larger issue.
America has a strange tolerance for political dynasties.
The Kennedys.
The Bushes.
The Clintons.
The Cuomos.
The Daleys.
The Sununus.
The Grassleys.
The problem is bipartisan.
Some members of political families have been excellent public officials. Family membership does not disqualify anyone from public service.
Yet famous political surnames carry advantages.
Name recognition has monetary value.
Political networks have value.
Donor relationships have value.
Campaign experience has value.
Media familiarity has value.
Someone born into a political family may begin a campaign several miles ahead of someone whose parents worked at a grocery store, factory, hospital or farm and never met a United States senator.
Term limits will not eliminate political families.
They can prevent one individual from occupying an office long enough for the office itself to become culturally associated with the family name.
Public office should circulate.
Political authority should circulate.
Opportunity should circulate.
Two Terms Means Two Terms, Not Two Terms Until We Find a Loophole
Any serious term-limit proposal must prevent politicians from turning the rule into Swiss cheese.
Sitting out a term should not reset the clock.
Changing districts should not reset the clock.
Resigning shortly before a term ends should not erase the term.
A politician who has been elected twice to an office has exhausted eligibility for that office.
Lifetime.
Partial terms and appointments would require clear rules. Redistricting would require careful drafting. Different state constitutions would require different implementation mechanisms.
Those are technical problems.
They are solvable.
The principle remains remarkably simple.
Two elections.
Then move along.
Make Politicians Become Citizens Again
There is another reason I like term limits that receives far too little attention.
I want elected officials to have to live under the laws they helped create without continuing to possess political authority.
I want former members of Congress standing in airport security lines.
I want former state legislators filling out government forms.
I want former school-board members sitting in the audience at school-board meetings.
I want former mayors complaining about potholes.
I want former senators trying to figure out Medicare paperwork.
I want people who once exercised government authority to return permanently to ordinary civic life.
That experience could be enormously valuable to the country.
A former politician should be a normal thing.
Instead, America has created an entire class of people for whom elected office becomes a decades-long occupation followed by lobbying, consulting, corporate boards, media contracts or another government position.
Public service should have an ending.
Knowing that the ending is coming may change how people govern.
If your political career cannot extend indefinitely, perhaps every vote does not have to be calculated against the next twenty years of reelection campaigns.
Perhaps leadership becomes less about career preservation.
Perhaps politicians spend less time constructing personal political empires.
Perhaps parties are forced to recruit and train new candidates.
Perhaps voters hear some new names.
Perhaps government begins looking a little more like the country it represents.
Nobody Owns the Chair
Iowa’s current debate over term limits should become much larger than one gubernatorial campaign proposal.
Twelve years is better than forever.
I want two terms.
Everywhere constitutionally possible, enact it.
Where state constitutions need amendment, amend them.
For Congress, where U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton prevents individual states from imposing their own additional congressional qualifications, pursue a federal constitutional amendment.
Make the rule bipartisan.
Make it prospective.
Make it difficult to evade.
Pair it with lobbying reform, campaign-finance transparency, revolving-door restrictions and stronger legislative institutions so influence does not simply migrate from longtime politicians to permanent lobbyists.
Then start turning over the chairs.
Chuck Grassley has served in elected government since Dwight Eisenhower was president.
Enough.
Nancy Pelosi spent decades in Congress and became one of the most consequential House leaders of the modern era.
Enough.
Mitch McConnell entered the Senate in 1985 and served forty years before leaving the Senate in January 2025.
Enough.
Patrick Leahy served forty-eight years in the Senate before retiring in 2023.
Enough.
Robert Byrd served more than fifty-one years in the Senate before his death in office in 2010.
Enough.
Strom Thurmond served more than forty-seven years in the Senate before retiring in 2003 at age 100.
Enough.
The names and parties change.
The principle does not.
No human being is so indispensable that representative government cannot continue without that person occupying the same elected office.
And no elected official should acquire so much longevity that the office begins to look like part of the person’s identity, estate or family legacy.
America was founded on an extraordinarily disruptive proposition: political authority does not belong permanently to rulers. It originates with the people.
We should act like we still believe that.
Serve your community.
Cast your votes.
Write your legislation.
Fight for your priorities.
Make mistakes.
Accomplish something.
Leave a record voters can judge.
Then leave.
Go home.
Write your memoir.
Plant corn.
Teach political science.
Start a foundation.
Argue with the television.
Become the person at the coffee shop who tells everybody how much smarter Congress was back when you were there.
I do not particularly care.
Just give somebody else the chair.
We do not need lifetime senators.
We do not need permanent governors.
We do not need county fiefdoms.
We do not need congressional aristocracies.
And we sure as hell do not need political families treating elected offices like heirlooms waiting to be handed to the next generation.
There are no hereditary seats in the United States Senate.
There are no dukedoms in Iowa.
There is no royal succession.
We do not have kings.
An elected office belongs to the public before you arrive, during every second you occupy it, and after you leave.
Two terms.
That is enough time to serve.
That is enough time to lead.
That is enough time to leave a record.
And when those two terms are over, democracy does not end.
Somebody else gets a turn.
Hell yes to term limits!
