When Extremists Govern Better Than Congress: The Case for Term Limits

The November 21, 2025 White House meeting between President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani was supposed to produce political theater. For months, Trump had called Mamdani a "100% Communist Lunatic" and threatened to cut federal funding to New York if he won. Mamdani had responded by calling Trump a "fascist" and his "worst nightmare," promising to "Trump-proof" the city. Media outlets across the spectrum prepared for confrontation. What they documented instead was something the American political system has nearly forgotten how to produce: two ideological opposites finding common ground on concrete problems.

The meeting focused on affordability. Rent, groceries, utility rates, public safety, housing construction. Trump stated plainly, "We agree on a lot more than I would have thought," and added, "I expect to be helping him, not hurting him." Mamdani emphasized his willingness to "work with anyone to make life more affordable for the more than eight-and-a-half million people who call the city home." Outlets from Reuters and PBS to Al Jazeera and ABC7NY described the exchange as "surprisingly cordial," "warm," and "productive." This was not spin from one ideological corner. This was cross-spectrum recognition that something unexpected had occurred.

Trump acknowledged the shift explicitly. "Some of my views have changed, too, since I entered public office," he said, directly linking the responsibilities of executive office to behavioral change. This is the sentence that matters for understanding what happened in that room and why Congress struggles to replicate it. Holding an executive office with fixed terms and immediate accountability for visible outcomes changes how people govern. It forces attention toward deliverables over positioning. It makes pragmatism a survival strategy, not a political liability.

Now ask yourself why this scene feels impossible to imagine in Congress.

The answer is not about partisan differences or policy disagreements. The answer is about who controls Congress and how long they have been there. Nancy Pelosi has served in the House since 1987, thirty-eight years. Mitch McConnell has been in the Senate for over forty years. Chuck Schumer has represented New York in Congress since 1981, forty-four years. Chuck Grassley, who filed to run for Senate reelection in 2028 at age ninety-one, was first elected in 1980. These are not exceptions. These are the people who run Congress.

The seniority system in both chambers means that power accumulates with time served. Committee chairs, leadership positions, floor control, and the ability to determine which bills receive votes all flow to those who have been there longest. A member serving their second or third term does not set the agenda. They do not control which amendments come to the floor. They do not decide what the caucus prioritizes. That power belongs to members who have spent decades climbing an internal hierarchy designed to reward longevity above effectiveness.

This creates a fundamental structural problem. When leadership has been in place for thirty or forty years, they have accumulated relationships, obligations, and dependencies that span entire careers of other members. They know which donors fund which races. They control committee assignments that determine whether a member can deliver for their district. They decide which members get leadership PAC support for tough reelections. A junior member who wants to build a career in Congress learns quickly that crossing senior leadership is professional suicide.

Compare that environment to the Trump-Mamdani meeting. Trump is in his second presidential term, constrained by the Twenty-second Amendment. He cannot run again. His political future is not dependent on staying in the good graces of a party apparatus that has been in place for decades. Mamdani just won his first citywide election. He does not answer to a caucus leadership structure built over forty years. Neither man faces the institutional pressure that tells a junior member of Congress exactly what they can and cannot say, which compromises are acceptable, and which cross-party collaborations will cost them their career.

The leadership entrenchment problem shows up in the data. Currently, there are eighty-eight members of Congress who have served for twenty or more years. These long-serving members do not just vote. They control the entire legislative apparatus. In the House, Speaker positions and committee chairs go to members with seniority. In the Senate, the majority and minority leaders, along with committee chairs, have served an average of over twenty-five years. These are the people who decide which bills come to the floor, which amendments are allowed, which compromises are acceptable.

The average tenure numbers tell part of the story. House members now serve an average of 8.6 years, senators 11.2 years, compared to roughly three years for both chambers in the 1880s. But averages obscure the real problem, which is concentration of power at the top. A handful of members who have been there for three or four decades control what everyone else can do. The system is not just creating longer careers. It is creating a permanent leadership class that determines the boundaries of acceptable political behavior for every other member.

The incumbency advantage reinforces this concentration. In the 2024 election cycle, 97% of congressional incumbents seeking reelection won their races. In 2022, 100% of incumbent senators won, a first in American history. But focus on what this means for leadership specifically. If you are a member who wants to eventually chair a committee or rise to leadership, you need to stay in Congress for twenty or thirty years minimum. That means thirty years of not taking political risks, not crossing leadership, not pursuing cross-party compromises that might endanger your standing with the caucus. The path to power in Congress is paved with decades of careful career management, not bold governance.

The financial architecture serves the leadership structure. In 2022 Senate races, incumbents raised an average of $29.7 million compared to challengers' $2.1 million, a fourteen-to-one ratio. But senior members do more than raise money for themselves. They control leadership PACs that distribute money to other members, creating financial dependencies. Research shows that access-oriented interest groups contribute 40.52 percentage points more to incumbents than ideologically motivated groups, providing approximately 60% of the financial advantage House incumbents enjoy and 71% in state legislatures. This money does not just buy reelection. It buys loyalty to the leadership structure that helps distribute it.

The public recognizes something is broken. Between 83% and 87% of Americans support congressional term limits, a figure stable for over thirty years. Support crosses partisan lines: 85% to 86% of Republicans, 79% to 80% of Democrats, 83% to 85% of independents. Congressional approval sits between 12% and 20%, near historic lows. Public trust in the federal government stands at 22%. Yet the institution continues unchanged because the people with the power to reform it are the same people who have spent decades building careers within it.

The behavioral costs of the seniority system show up in legislative cooperation patterns. From the late 1960s through the late 1970s, bipartisan voting in Congress was commonplace, with members regularly crossing party lines on legislative matters. By the 2000s, this cooperation had collapsed dramatically. Research tracking roll-call votes shows that cross-party collaboration declined by more than 80% over this period. In recent Congresses, fewer than ten representatives have accounted for the overwhelming majority of cross-party votes. This collapse tracks directly with the consolidation of leadership power in longer-serving members who use their control over committees, floor time, and party resources to enforce partisan discipline.

This is why the Trump-Mamdani meeting matters. Neither man operates within a seniority structure. Trump's constitutional term limit means he is not positioning for the next three decades of party leadership. Mamdani's fresh electoral mandate means he is not beholden to a caucus structure built over forty years. Both face immediate, visible accountability for outcomes. Trump must manage economic performance, security threats, and public sentiment with no possibility of running again. Mamdani must deliver on housing, transit, and cost of living to a city that just elected him. Their incentives align with measurable results, not with managing relationships within a permanent leadership hierarchy.

Exit polling from the 2025 New York City mayoral race found that 10% of Trump's 2024 supporters voted for Mamdani, representing approximately 60,000 crossover voters. Among Asian American voters who supported Trump in 2024, 20% voted for Mamdani in 2025. Voters are less ideologically rigid than the leadership class assumes. The rigidity is a product of career protection within a seniority system, not voter demand.

Term limits would directly dismantle this leadership entrenchment. If House members were limited to three two-year terms (six years total) and senators to two six-year terms (twelve years total), no one could accumulate four decades of seniority. Committee chairs would turn over. Leadership positions would cycle. The ability of a handful of members to control the entire legislative agenda through accumulated institutional power would end.

The expertise objection deserves attention. Recent peer-reviewed research on legislative effectiveness analyzed decades of congressional election data and bill cosponsorship patterns. The research found that when districts elect political amateurs, those representatives initially attract cross-party collaborators at lower rates than incumbents and offer bipartisan support to opposing-party legislation less frequently. This is a real cost. Experience matters for building collaborative relationships.

However, the same research found that by the third term, approximately six years of service, amateur legislators become indistinguishable from retained incumbents in their collaborative effectiveness. The learning curve stabilizes. This empirical finding maps directly onto the term limit structure proposed in current legislation. The problem is not that members need some experience to be effective. The problem is that the seniority system requires decades of service to reach positions of real power, and by that point the incentive structure has transformed governance into career management. Six years provides enough time to learn legislative mechanics and build working relationships. Twelve years in the Senate allows for deeper policy expertise and institutional knowledge. What neither timeline allows is the accumulation of the kind of entrenched power that currently prevents the pragmatic cooperation voters consistently demand.

The Brookings Institution argues that term limits shift power to unelected actors, particularly lobbyists and staff. This concern has merit, and surveys of lobbyists in five term-limited states found consensus that term limits caused influence to shift toward governors, agencies, and interest groups. But Congress already faces a severe revolving door problem. Research shows that access-oriented interest groups—those cultivating long-term relationships with incumbents—contribute 40.52 percentage points more to incumbents than ideologically motivated groups, providing approximately 60% of House incumbents' financial advantage and 71% in state legislatures. These long-term relationships have measurable financial value. The current system empowers lobbyists precisely because they can build multi-decade relationships with members and staff who stay in place indefinitely. Term limits disrupt this by creating regular turnover.

More importantly, institutional knowledge does not have to reside exclusively in elected members. Professional, nonpartisan committee staff and legislative support agencies like the Congressional Research Service and Congressional Budget Office can preserve continuity across member transitions if adequately funded. The problem is not that Congress lacks institutional capacity. The problem is that institutional power is concentrated in a small number of members who have been there for thirty or forty years.

The presidential precedent makes the argument for consistency. The Twenty-second Amendment, ratified in 1951, limits presidents to two terms. It was approved by 41 state legislatures with overwhelming bipartisan support and has successfully constrained six presidents over 74 years without serious attempts at repeal. The United States trusts term limits to prevent executive entrenchment. The question is why Congress is exempt from the same accountability structure, especially when congressional power is concentrated in leadership that has served far longer than any modern president.

Current legislative proposals reflect this framework. Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Ralph Norman have introduced matching resolutions in the 119th Congress, SJR1 and HJR12, proposing three House terms and two Senate terms. The proposals have attracted 15 Senate cosponsors and over 100 expected House cosponsors. But note who is not cosponsoring: current leadership in either chamber. The people who run Congress under the seniority system are not volunteering to limit their own accumulated power.

Passage requires a two-thirds vote in both chambers and ratification by 38 state legislatures. The alternative pathway is an Article V convention called by 34 state legislatures, bypassing Congress entirely. Nine states have passed resolutions calling for such a convention on term limits. This alternative matters because it acknowledges the structural reality that asking Congress to limit its own leadership's power may be politically impossible. The institution most in need of reform is the gatekeeper preventing it.

The Trump-Mamdani meeting shows what becomes possible when leadership is not entrenched for decades. Two figures with fundamental ideological differences can focus on shared constituent needs when they are not navigating a seniority hierarchy that punishes deviation from leadership priorities. Trump and Mamdani could stand at the same podium and discuss affordability, public safety, and governance because neither answers to a caucus leadership structure built over forty years of accumulated power.

Congress lacks this freedom. A junior member cannot independently pursue the kind of pragmatic compromise the Trump-Mamdani meeting represents without considering how it affects their relationship with leadership that controls their committee assignments, their fundraising support, and their path to positions of influence. The system is designed to enforce loyalty to long-serving leadership, not responsiveness to evolving constituent needs.

Term limits would change this calculation fundamentally. Leadership positions would cycle regularly. Committee chairs would know their influence is measured by what they accomplish in a defined window, not by how long they hold power. Junior members would not face decades-long apprenticeships to senior members who have controlled the institution since before they were elected. The concentration of power that currently makes moments like Trump-Mamdani impossible in Congress would be structurally dismantled.

This does not guarantee bipartisan cooperation. It removes the primary structural barrier to it. When Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, and the other members who have run Congress for decades eventually leave, the next generation of leadership will face the same seniority incentives unless the system itself changes. Term limits provide that structural change by ensuring that no future generation of leaders can accumulate the same concentration of long-term power.

Voters deserve to ask their representatives a direct question: If Trump and Mamdani can find common ground after months of mutual attacks, what prevents you from doing the same? The answer is increasingly clear. The seniority system concentrates power in a leadership class that has been in place for decades, and that leadership controls whether other members can pursue the kind of pragmatic cooperation voters demand. Term limits would not fix every problem, but they would dismantle the structural entrenchment that makes the Trump-Mamdani moment feel impossible in Congress.

The meeting provides the proof of concept. The data shows where power actually resides in Congress. The public provides the mandate with 83% to 87% support across partisan lines. What remains is the political will to impose structural accountability on the institution that most resists it, particularly on the leadership that has accumulated decades of power under the current system. That is why term limits cannot wait.