Ron DeSantis: Career Politicians Who Have Been in Office for Decades Are ‘Very Out of Touch’

Career politicians who have been in political office for decades are “very out of touch” with what is going on in the country, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Tuesday during a speech to the Florida American Legion Boys State Program.

“Now when I look at how to structure a government, I think the founders’ basic insights are the best insights that anyone’s made yet,” DeSantis observed. “The one thing that I think that I wish they would have done — and they considered this — but I wish they would have put term limits for members of Congress.”

DeSantis said:

So at the time they were thinking about it and they called it rotation in office, and they were thinking, I don’t even know if people would want to serve. I mean just think about it, they didn’t have modern transportation. So you’re gonna get on a horse from South Carolina — and at the time it was Philadelphia then New York and then eventually it was Washington, DC — but you’re gonna want to get on a horse and go back and forth to there. … But you really want to do that for 30, 40 years?

“I don’t think that they really conceived of kind of this idea of somebody being in Congress for decades and decades. But what’s happened particularly in the last 50, 60 years is people get in there and their number one goal isn’t to do great things for the district or the country,'” DeSantis said, explaining that their “number one prerogative” is, all too often, “to get reelected.”

“And so that takes precedent over anything. So you end up with a situation where you’ve got a lot of these people in very high levels of the Congress who were in their 70s and 80s — not that there’s anything wrong with that — but they’ve been in Congress for 30 or 40 years and I think they’re very out of touch with what’s going on in this country,” he said.

Indeed, 82-year-old House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has served in Congress since 1987 — 35 years. President Biden has also been in politics for decades, getting elected for Senate in 1972, where he served until he ran alongside former President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. It is not just Democrats either. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has held his seat since 1985 — 37 years.

“That’s one of the reasons why Congress is not well regarded as an institution,” DeSantis added.

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