Term Limits? Your opinion? Read article inside

(CNN) -- Anti-establishment candidates are capitalizing on widespread anti-incumbent fervor and proposing term limits as a way to bring the power back to the people.

As political hopefuls try to persuade voters to send them to Congress, they're also promising they won't be there long.

Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul said that if elected, he can't see himself serving more than two terms. In Rhode Island, Democratic congressional hopeful Bill Lynch has proposed a 12-year cap in the House and Senate. And in Maryland, Republican Andy Harris has assured voters that, should he go to the U.S. House, he'll be out of there by 2023.

It's a message that polls well and gets applause at campaign rallies, but David King, director of Harvard's program for Newly Elected Members of the U.S. Congress, said term limits do more harm than good.

"It's political junk food. It tastes good but hurts the body politic in the long run," he said.

Advocates and opponents of term limits are after the same thing: keeping the power out of the hands of lobbyists and special interests.

King says term limits do the opposite by taking the business of lawmaking away from elected representatives and giving it to professional staff and lobbyists.

Instead, the elections process needs better campaign finance laws and a more engaged electorate, he said.

"That leads to a situation in which we reward politicians or statesmen or stateswoman who have been around for a long time and are terrific, while at the same time being able to get rid of the low-quality legislators at all levels," King said.

But Philip Blumel, president of U.S. Term Limits, points to the high re-election rates as evidence of the need for term limits.

Re-election rates have hovered around 96 percent in the House and 85 percent in the Senate over the past 10 years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

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http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/07/19/term.limits/index.html?hpt=C1