Restoration: Congress, Term Limits and The Recovery of Deliberative Democracy

Overview

George F. Will’s Restoration argues that American self-government has drifted from the Founders’ design and that institutional incentives, not merely bad actors, have turned Congress into a body preoccupied with incumbency, symbolism, and delegation. He proposes term limits as the pivotal reform to rekindle deliberative democracy, shifting Congress from permanent campaigning back to reason-giving, bargaining, and accountability for lawmaking. Written amid early-1990s disillusionment with Washington, the book blends constitutional reflection with pointed diagnosis and an actionable remedy.

The Malady of the “Permanent Congress”

Will contends that modern Congress is a career habitat rather than a temporary trust. Incumbency advantages, franking, fundraising networks, targeted spending, and gerrymandered safe seats, lock in officeholders and discourage electoral turnover. Seniority rules, committee baronies, and the iron triangles of committees, agencies, and lobbyists further insulate members from voters and the national interest. The legislative process fractures into parochialism and theatrical oversight, while hard choices are deferred. The result is fiscal profligacy, a swollen administrative state, and a vacuum into which an energetic presidency and an ambitious judiciary step.

The Erosion of Deliberation

Deliberation, as Will defines it, is the practice of public justification: aligning means to ends through argument, compromise, and institutional responsibility. Media culture and the “permanent campaign” coax members toward posturing and blame-shifting. Delegation to agencies and omnibus legislating permit credit-claiming without owning tradeoffs. Congress becomes a stage for symbolic politics rather than a forum for crafting durable law.

The Founders’ Expectations and Modern Reality

Will reads the Constitution as expecting rotation through frequent elections and citizen legislators with private attachments outside government. The Articles of Confederation had explicit term limits; the Constitution did not, trusting electoral churn. Modern incumbency technology and district engineering have defeated that expectation. The Madisonian architecture, separated powers balanced by rival ambitions, cannot function if Congress is a closed guild impervious to electoral renewal.

The Case for Term Limits

Term limits, as Will presents them, would puncture the protective membrane around incumbents, create regular open-seat contests, break seniority hierarchies, and disrupt the long courtships between committees and regulated interests. Shorter time horizons would paradoxically strengthen independence: members freed from perpetual reelection incentives could accept responsibility for necessary but unpopular decisions. Rotation would widen the social base of representation, restoring the “citizen legislature” and recalibrating relations with the presidency and bureaucracy by compelling Congress to reclaim Article I powers rather than outsource them.

Addressing Objections

To the claim that limits would empower staff and lobbyists, Will responds that concentrated, long-tenured power already does so; turnover breaks cozy relationships and narrows the channels through which influence flows. To worries about lost expertise, he argues that democratic accountability should not be traded for technocratic tenure and that expertise can be sourced through hearings, agencies answerable to clearer statutes, and civil society. Fears of lame-duck irresponsibility underestimate party brands, reputational incentives, and the disciplining effect of serving alongside colleagues who soon return to private life.

Federalism, Law, and Reform Pathways

Will favors a constitutional amendment establishing congressional term limits, while welcoming state activism as a spur to national reform and as a normative statement by sovereign polities. He situates term limits within a broader constitutional restoration: restraining delegation, narrowing omnibus legislating, and reviving committee work oriented to publicly defensible law rather than private favors. Yet he keeps one reform central, insisting that without rotation other fixes will be gamed by entrenched incentives.

The Promised Recovery

Restoration sketches a Congress reclaimed for argument and responsibility. Term-limited members would legislate under the gaze of voters who can once again choose among genuinely competitive candidates. Executive ambition would meet a legislature with both the authority and the will to deliberate. The republic’s health, Will suggests, depends less on better rhetoric than on better institutions, and the most catalytic institutional change is to make congressional service a chapter, not a career.