Backtracking on Term Limits

In 1994, Republicans swept into Congress on a wave of revolutionary ideas, like limiting their own terms.

Back then, George Nethercutt said: "I think I can do good things in six years and then come home and let someone else have a chance."

Nethercutt's pledge helped topple powerful House Speaker Tom Foley and made him the darling of the term-limits movement.

But now that promise is coming due, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, and Nethercutt is singing a different tune.

Attkisson asked him if he wishes he hadn't made that promise. "Yes I do, I wish I hadn't," he says.

Nethercutt, R-Wash., wants to stay, saying there's still too much work to be done. As to voters who took him at his word, he says, "they've said to me, straight on, face-to-face, don't leave us, we need you there a little longer."

But Mark Sanford, R-S.C., who rode the same term-limit wave into office, is keeping his word and stepping down after next year. Those who don't, he says, damage everyone's credibility.

"He is making a terrible mistake in this thing," says Sanford. "Not only is it a breach of that personal contract, that promise you made to the individuals, but it also undermines the larger body of Congress."

So far, three House members have flip-flopped on their term-limit pledge. But it may not hurt them much at the polls. Voters aren't as angry today as they were back in '94, thanks to the good economy.

Political analyst Norm Ornstein says, "they don't want to rock the boat anywhere. They're not as concerned with issues that, at the moment at least, are peripheral to them, like term limits."

Nethercutt is counting on it.

He says he realizes that this is what some people don't like about politicians, that they can make an emphatic promise one day and change their mind the next.

"Well, I understand that," he says. "But I think I've been true to everything else I've said and ran for when I did."

That sounds like a new Washington truism: Term limits are a good idea, as long as it's somebody else's term you're limiting.