Yes, Virginia, we are in and should fear not just an industrial-governmental complex, but the whole self fulfilling  government vortex.

This has been going on for decades.  The Senior Executive is limited to two terms.  Legislators can last forever, or as long as the Depends supply holds out.

But it costs tens of millions to be elected to Congress for a two or a six year term for a salary, benefits, and prerequisites which total probably no more than $500K per year.

Your first job as a legislator is to be re-slated and reelected.  Congressional safe seats are reapportioned in the states after every census.  The number of truly contested seats decreases  every ten years.  The redistricting would make Elbridge Gerry proud.

Nevertheless there is a hot pursuit of money for campaigning and a paralele hot pursuit of money for pork.  Some smart mathematician should be able to figure out the relative value of campaign dollar versus pork dollar in terms of votes.

Reelection assuages egos, provides a comfortable life and an excellent formal and informal pension.  The formal pension comes computed and paid by the Federal government.  In most cases it is dwarfed by the informal pension paid by special interest groups from corporate to labor to goo-goos for the services rendered in the practice of lobbying.

The reason term limits failed was because it would have released too many ex-legislators into the pool of lobbying swag, to divide it up into smaller pieces.

The veneer separating the taxpayer from his elected representative gets thicker every year.  The contribution letters become more frequent, the contact directly more distant, the size of the office staffs every greater, even as the congressional staffs -- the permanent mandarins -- grow larger

The evidence is clear -- the 1,000 page bill which no body can read and understand is the product of the mandarins on the various committees who communicate with the mandarins on the office staffs.  The elected official does what his mandarin tells him.  The 1,000 page bill makes reference to the million pages of statutes which reference each other.  Would that Gilbert and Sullivan were alive today.

Which places the ideologues in control -- the missionaries for special political interests -- firmly in the drivers' seats. 

With the elected interested solely in reelection and not the welfare of the country, with the purposeful complexity of the legislation designed to obfuscate its results, the citizen is at a loss. 

He is less than a semi-colon in the legislator's existence -- unless he has enough money to get some attention or can promise a differential bloc of votes, or even better, both.

On a mailing list, he receives form letter.  On the internet, he receives self-serving so-called surveys.

And the beat goes on.