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Whopper of the Week: Rep. Tom TancredoThe views of a term limits champion grow more, er, complex in Congress.

By Timothy NoahPosted Friday, Sept. 27, 2002, at 3:47 PM ET

" 'We want to reinvigorate the electoral process by introducing people into the system who think of government service as a temporary endeavor, not as a career,' said Tom Tancredo, head of the Colorado Term Limit Coalition."

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—"As More States Push Term Limits, Congress Wades in Nervously," by John King of the Associated Press, Aug. 2, 1994

"Tancredo was a leader of the term limits movement and has pledged to stick to the three terms that Colorado voters tried to impose on congressional representatives in 1994. We don't expect him to start backpedaling like Rep. Scott McInnis."

—"Tancredo in the Sixth," a Rocky Mountain News editorial endorsing Tancredo's first bid for Congress, Oct. 17, 1998

"Rep. Tom Tancredo apologized to his former allies in the national term limits movement on Thursday but said he's sticking by his decision to walk away from his pledge.

" 'I am sorry I let them down—because I did,' Tancredo said in a conference call with reporters. 'And I would feel the same way if I were them.' … Tancredo braced himself for a barrage of criticism over his decision because he once led Colorado's term limits movement.

"He says the national term limits movement has faded since its heyday in the mid-1990s. 'I think my decision here, it's like taking a little bit of air out of an already deflated balloon,' Tancredo said."

—"Tancredo Offers Allies Apology," by M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News, Sept. 27, 2002

Discussion. The decision by Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., to renege on his self-imposed limit of three terms in Congress expands the Society of Fraudulent Cincinnati, Washington branch, to six. The others are Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash.; Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass.; Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo.; Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont.; and Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn. Can we please retire this crusade now?

Got a whopper? Send it to . To be considered, an entry must be an unambiguously false statement paired with an unambiguous refutation, and both must be derived from some appropriately reliable public source. Preference will be given to newspapers and other documents that Chatterbox can link to online.

Whopper Archive:
Sept. 13, 2002: Al-Muhajiroun
Sept. 6, 2002: National Republican Congressional Committee
Aug. 29, 2002: Eddie Joe Lloyd
Aug. 22, 2002: Larry Klayman
Aug. 2, 2002: Al Gore
July 26, 2002: Princeton admissions dean Stephen LeMenager
July 19, 2002: James Traficant
July 12, 2002: Maryland Lt. Gov. candidate Michael S. Steele
July 5, 2002: Hesham Mohamed Hadayet
June 28, 2002: WorldCom
June 21, 2002: Terry Lynn Barton
June 14, 2002: Tom Ridge
June 7, 2002: Former FBI Deputy Director Weldon Kennedy
May 31, 2002: Ari Fleischer
May 23, 2002: Condoleezza Rice
May 17, 2002: Robert Mueller
May 9, 2002: Karl Rove
May 3, 2002: Gen. Richard Myers
April 25, 2002: Donald Rumsfeld
April 18, 2002: George W. Bush
April 11, 2002: The Rev. Robert J. Banks, archdiocese of Boston
April 5, 2002: George W. Bush
March 29, 2002: Major League Baseball
March 21, 2002: Billy Graham
March 14, 2002: INS commissioner James W. Ziglar
March 8, 2002: Robert Zoellick and the U.S. steel industry
Feb. 28, 2002: Al Sharpton
Feb. 22, 2002: Olympic skating judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne
Feb. 14, 2002: Kenneth Lay
Feb. 8, 2002: Enron spokeswoman Peggy Mahoney
Jan. 31, 2002: Monsanto
Jan. 24, 2002: Linda Chavez
Jan. 17, 2002: George W. Bush
Jan. 10, 2002: Simon & Schuster
Jan. 4, 2002: The Associated Press

(Click here to access the Whopper Archive for 2001.)

E-mail Timothy Noah at .

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.

COMMENTS

Remark From The Fray:

It's not time to retire the term limits movement. Rather than demonstrating that the issue should go away, Tancredo's hyporcisy is another demonstration of the corrupting attraction to power that make term limits so important. Once a person gets elected, districts get redrawn, campaign contributions get solicited, focus groups and pollsters get engaged, all in the service of that great and good objective-- to keep the politician in office as long as he wants to be.

My local congressman is Henry Waxman. I have no problem with him ideologically, but he's been there forever and he's not leaving his job so long as he wants to keep it, even though there may be potentially better congressional candidates in my district, a need for new blood, or any number of other reasons why he shouldn't stay there. If my district produces a fabulous young politician who does great things at the local level or in state government, it doesn't matter; he or she not going to be a member of Congress, because Waxman is entrenched. You think that South Carolina couldn't have produced a better Senator in the last half century than Strom Thurmond?

Term limits are a blunt instrument, sure. You kick out the good with the bad. But without term limits, almost everyone stays in office forever. That may be good for Tom Tancredo, but it's lousy for the system.

-- Dilan Esper

(To reply, click here.)

(9/28)

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