CMV: A solid argument for Congressional term limits is that politicians are too afraid to take a criminal out of office, for fear of losing the next election.
When lust for retention of political power, even at the personal level, overwhelms doing what is right, then the weakness of humanity is reflected in collapse of checks and balances in the system. This requires intervention in the form of limiting that retention of power. If officials are less worried about the next election because their time is about up anyway, then they may be stronger in doing the right thing. This is in the line of “absolute power corrupts absolutely” and the way to stem corruption is to stem time in power. I am less than convinced by arguments that politicians need more than one term to get things done. If this were true, then this would be saying that the Constitutional specifications for length of term were ill-conceived, and I don’t believe that to be true. I am also less than convinced by other work-around about term limits like cronyism and grooming of a successor. This says that voters can’t identify a crony and choose not to elect the crony.