Jon Stewart once described Chuck Schumer as a “human flat tire.”

Seth Meyers described Mike Johnson as “the human embodiment of a forwarded church email.”

An internet wit described John Thune as “having the energy of a man explaining ethanol subsidies at a Marriott bar.”

Earlier this year, just before Whosit’s State of the Union address, Hakeem Jeffries urged Democrats to give him the silent treatment. Stephen Colbert responded:

“For Democrats who did attend, Hakeem Jeffries urged members not to make a scene, an approach he dubbed ‘silent defiance,’ which I believe is a bold rebrand of doing jack squat.”

Great jokes, I guess. But like a lot of humor, they point to something darker: the current leadership of both parties has failed us in nearly every possible way.

Not convinced? Okay. To refresh your memory, here is an abbreviated list of the things Congress has failed to do:

• Stop the ill-advised, poorly planned, badly executed war with Iran. Yes. That is their job. Congress has voted on the War Powers Act four times. And it has failed four times. That is a failure of leadership — not to mention backbone and several other vital body parts — in the face of a despot-wannabe president whose philosophy seems to be: shoot, aim, fire.

• Prevent Don the Destructor from tearing down part of the White House so he could build a $1 billion vulgarian ballroom — one he claimed political donations would fund (aka bribes), but now apparently being paid for by taxpayers.

• Hold the DOJ and the president accountable for failing to release the Epstein files as required by statute, then botching the release they did manage.

• Congress holds the purse strings, not the guy currently farting behind the Resolute Desk. Yet they allowed CheetoMan and his sidekick Muskboy to decimate the EPA, NASA, USAID, Veterans Affairs, and other agencies without reason, planning, or shame. This has led to more pollution, endless waits for veterans seeking treatment, and Musk becoming even richer, but also to between 500,000 and 1,000,000 deaths from starvation and disease. Oxfam estimates that by 2030, a child under five will die every 40 seconds as a direct result of these cuts — the first increase in under-five child mortality this century.

• Allow the baby-in-chief to run the executive branch without adult supervision. He has fired twenty-one inspectors general and replaced only eight. Those replacements have not exactly pledged to be stewards of the public trust so much as interns for the royal court.

• Fail to push back when the midnight tweeter used imaginary crises to overturn treaties approved by Congress.

Congress is supposed to be a coequal branch of government, not a retirement community with subpoena power. But under the current leadership it has become as useful as fact-checkers at a conspiracy convention.

Still not convinced?

Think of all the bills they have passed to help average Americans.

I’ll wait.

You probably will too.

Because other than the bill with the naming convention apparently created by a six-year-old who thinks gold filigree is the answer to every design problem, this Congress seems capable only of naming post offices and forwarding strongly worded fundraising emails.

And let’s not pretend no one is noticing. We all are. 90% of voters disapprove of the job Congress is doing. And those of us who are supposedly wiser because we have more wrinkles are the ones who disapprove most.

• 18–34: 12% approve
• 35–54: 12% approve
• 55+: 7% approve

By the way, and for shits and giggles, this is regardless of party.

• Republicans: 20% approve — down catastrophically from 63% in March 2025
• Independents: 11% approve — essentially flat and low all year
• Democrats: 3% approve — nearly matching the all-time record low of 2%

At this point, you may be thinking what every good boss I’ve ever had has said to me when I kindly and tactfully explained the problem with their latest, greatest, most innovative idea.

“Great Paul. You have identified the problem. Now what is the solution.”

Oh, now you want a solution? How dare you!

Okay. Let me try.

First, each party should pass a resolution that no one in a leadership role should be older than retirement age. This is not ageism. Well, maybe a little. But the world is changing too fast for people who still print MapQuest directions.

I mean really, to paraphrase Stephen Colbert, “Do we really want the republic run by the cast of Cocoon and the management team from a regional casino buffet?” Or give the board of The Villages subpoena power?

In an ideal world, the ballot box would constantly renew those serving us in Washington. Sadly, the Citizens United decision changed all that. The ruling held that government cannot restrict independent political spending by corporations, unions, and nonprofits because such spending is protected under the First Amendment as free speech.

We can debate later whether corporations should have the same free speech rights as humans, but money pouring into campaigns has tripled since then. Most of that money comes from corporations and billionaires who think democracy is a concierge service.

It means Congress no longer works for the people who elected them. Those people can’t afford the table minimum. They are too busy funding campaigns to care much about we the people. Without a constitutional amendment, we cannot fix campaign finance.

What we can do is limit entrenched power, increase accountability, and encourage citizen legislators by limiting members of Congress and the Senate to 12 years in office through a bipartisan bill. Not perfect, but still more realistic than expecting Congress to suddenly rediscover shame.

And can you imagine a member of Congress trying to explain to constituents why this is a bad idea? Would love to be there for that example of double talk. I assume it would involve a flag pin, three lobbyists, and someone explaining why twelve years is not enough time to get things done. Hey dude, haven’t you heard it’s a gig economy.

Yes, Naomi, this will certainly be challenged in the courts. In America, every good idea eventually is. But I believe it is likely to be upheld because strict constructionists Thomas and Scalia both authored opinions suggesting such a law would be constitutional.

Term limits are no longer a political reform. They are a defibrillator for a patient who has already written its own eulogy. Congress, in its current form, is not a coequal branch of government — it is a green room for lobbyists, a billionaire donor-funded daycare for the professionally shameless, and a monument to the proposition that mediocrity, if sufficiently funded, is eternal.

The Founders gave us a republic. We gave it back. We traded it, in fact, for a system so thoroughly marinated in corporate money and cowardice that it can no longer tell the difference between representing constituents and billing them. So yes, term limits. Or pitchforks. History, as it turns out, is not particularly picky.