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There’s a growing sense of unease among the voting public. Like me (and you, I’m sure) many people look on the increasingly nasty partisan politics in Washington with enormous dissatisfaction.

Instead of getting the job done, politicians on both sides of the aisle seem more interested in slamming the other party.

Instead of working out an effective answer to the problems of illegal aliens, the politicians are apparently more worried about alienating blocs of voters.

Instead of uniting to prosecute the war against terrorism, some politicians seem to have their eye on their personal prospects for gaining re-election in 2006 and the White House in 2008.

Instead of moving to new technology to lessen our dependency on imported petroleum, we get rhetoric — and constantly escalating gasoline prices.

The underlying problem, it seems to me, is that professional politicians have a completely different set of goals than we, the voters, have.

A professional politician’s goals are: get elected, get re-elected, continue to get re-elected for the rest of your life (or until either old age or criminal investigation encourages you to retire).

Professional politicians see every issue brought before them not as a problem to be solved for the betterment of the people, but as an opportunity to get re-elected — or as a danger to their ambition for re-election.

Take a look at the way they behave. We have members of the Congress who have been in office for decades, generations. Sen. Robert Byrd (D./ WVa), who is almost 90, is running for his sixth term. He’s spent 30 years in the Senate and wants six more — if he lives that long.

When a thorny problems such as illegal immigration or disaster relief comes before them, these lifetime politicians vote for what would be best for them. That’s why they are always blaming the other party for the troubles we face. It’s easier to blame the other guy than to work out an effective solution to a problem.

So we lurch from crisis to crisis and very little gets done by our elected “leaders.” That’s why some of the biggest problems this nation has faced — such as civil rights and corporate crime — have been resolved by the courts. The politicians wouldn’t touch them, so the people turned to the judicial branch for “redress of grievances.”

Golly, even in our beloved Naples the mayor has successfully campaigned to remove the two-term limit on his incumbency. Are we heading for the kind of government we find in tinpot dictatorships, where the “maximum leader” is elected president-for-life?

This is why I favor term limits for every political office.

We have a two-term limit for the President of the United States. After Franklin D. Roosevelt won four terms in the White House, a Republican-led Congress instituted the two-term limit for the presidency. I think they were afraid that FDR might climb out of his grave and beat them again.

Why not term limits for Congress? And every other elective office?

Those who oppose term limits claim that by forcing incumbents out of office we lose their valuable experience. Two points to consider:

First, if we have all these problems despite the valuable experience of incumbent office-holders, how valuable can their experience truly be? Second, by staying in office for so many terms, the incumbents block new talent and even discourage younger citizens from running for office.

Make that three points: There’s nothing to stop a politician who has to leave office because of term limits from running for a different office, perhaps a higher one, perhaps a lower one. Frankly, though, I think once a politician leaves office he or she ought to spend a few years trying to earn an honest living and perhaps contributing something to the gross domestic product.

Here in Southwest Florida, Rep. Dudley Goodlette has reached his term limit. Instead of fishing around for a different political post, why not put all that energy into some worthy private charity or other public service?

One criticism of the term-limits concept that has considerable merit is this: term limits may force the politician out of office, but the staff remains. The bureaucracy goes on, despite the elected office-holder.

This is a valid problem, because in most political offices, the un-elected bureaucracy shapes the issues that the politician deals with. The office-holder depends on her or his staff, or on the professional personnel who run the county or city machinery.

A U.S. Senator, for example, has staff people who advise on various subjects: foreign affairs, environment, science, education, etc. To a considerable extent, the Senator only knows what the staff sees fit to let her know. As an activist for space development, I’ve seen this system at work. The Senator doesn’t know much more about space than what his staff tells him.

On the more local level, it’s the county or city staff that often sets the agenda and frames the discussion.

Staff personnel are usually civil servants; they’re there for life — or at least until retirement. When the politician leaves, the staff remains.

One can only hope that a newly elected senator or representative, or county commissioner, or city council member will bring some new ideas to the office, and have the wisdom to filter the information that staffers and advisers give.

After all, if we allow the incumbents to stay in office indefinitely, we have practically no chance of getting new ideas into the system. If we impose term limits and bring new people into government, then perhaps we can get some new approaches to solving our problems.

Term limits would force new blood into government. It would encourage citizens to run for office, in large part because they wouldn’t always be facing the overwhelming difficulties of unseating an incumbent.

Yes, good people would be forced out of office. We would lose some valuable political leaders. But they could always stay in the political process as private citizens. If they wanted to.

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Naples voter Ben Bova is the author of more than 110 books, including his latest novel, TITAN. Dr. Bova’s web site address is www.benbova.com.