Term Limits, Impeachment and House Leadership: From the Gingrich Contract to the Pelosi Contrast

• In Event: Legislative Process (Or Lack Thereof)

Abstract

The question of limiting the number of terms a Member of Congress can serve has been debated since the beginning of the Republic. While Congress and the states in the early 1950s limited presidents to no more than two four-year terms by constitutional amendment, there was no parallel move to limit Members’ terms until some 40-years later. The issue surfaced in the early 1990s as public trust in Congress plummeted. It culminated in the Republican takeover of Congress and the Newt Gingrich-inspired Contract with America that proposed term limits for House and Senate members by constitutional amendment, and for committee chairs –later changed to include the speaker and subcommittee chairs --by House rules changes. While the constitutional amendment for representatives and senators failed, the limits on committee and subcommittee chairs and the speaker were incorporated in House rules. Although limited to four terms under the new rule, Speaker Gingrich stepped down under fire after just two terms. It was not until the beginning of his successor’s third term that the House abolished the four-term limit rule for speakers. Gingrich’s fall from grace in his own party can be traced in part to his championing of the impeachment of President Bill Clinton –an initiative that backfired and caused Republicans to lose seats. The nexus of both term limits and impeachment played out later under House Democrats when Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed in 2018 to self-limit herself to one more term as speaker unless two-thirds of the Democratic Caucus agreed to give her another term. At the same time, she was being buffeted by the progressive members of her own caucus to move on impeaching President Donald Trump. Unlike Gingrich Pelosi resisted their calls for impeachment on grounds there was not yet substantial bipartisan support for impeachment either in Congress or the country. She nevertheless strongly supported the multiple committee investigations into aspects of the Trump campaign and his administration. The term limit and impeachment issues provide interesting case studies into the contrasting leadership styles and approaches of Speakers Gingrich and Pelosi and what it tells us about the Congresses of the late nineteenth and early twenty-first centuries. The Pelosi contrast to the Gingrich Contract provides a lesson in leadership of both the majority and minority parties in Congress and how leaders and their members strategize on gaining and retaining majority control.

Author

• Donald R. Wolfensberger, Woodrow Wilson Center