EDITORIAL KEEPING TERM LIMITS POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT STRIKES BACK AGAINST CRITICAL REFORM.

IT'S no secret that California's experiment with term limits hasn't lived up to expectations. Incumbency for life may be dead, but political hackery lives on in the form of politicians madly hopping from post to post.

Still, there's one unmistakable sign that term limits are doing good -- the politicians hate them.

And that's why we should resist the various efforts under way to water down term limits at both the city and state levels.

In L.A., the latest attack on term limits comes from the League of Women Voters and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce -- two organizations that paint themselves as nonpartisan, do-gooder outfits, but more often than not line up behind the political establishment that flatters them and gives them a sense of purpose.

For years, city politicians have been grumbling about repealing or lengthening term limits, but the politicians themselves would rather not launch this effort -- that would be too nakedly self-serving. So instead, the nation's highest-paid municipal officials are letting their good friends at the league and the chamber do their bidding, thereby giving the effort a gloss of civic responsibility and maybe even a hint of populism.

Never mind that voters everywhere have consistently backed tougher term limits, or that term limits have given the council its first infusion of fresh blood in decades.

Groups that claim to advocate for good government and the public interest should be demanding better service to the public, not conspiring with career politicians to water them down.

The same goes for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sacramento's self-styled populist and reformer, who has offered an anti-term limits plan of his own for the state Legislature.

Schwarzenegger has proposed expanding the length of time that legislators can stay in office in exchange for their support for a badly needed statewide redistricting plan.

But for better or for worse -- worse, in our opinion -- Californians voted down redistricting last November. And if they wouldn't back redistricting on its own merits, why would they back it coupled with a plan to weaken term limits, which they support?

The answer is they wouldn't. But Schwarzenegger assumes that the special interests would swallow redistricting if it were packaged with the gutting of term limits -- after all, the same pols they already own would stay in office longer. And if the special interests don't fight the plan, it might just have a chance of winning at the polls.

That might be true, but it sure is a cynical calculation -- as cynical as the league and the chamber's efforts to weaken term limits here in L.A. Voters enacted term limits because they were tired of cynical politics, not because they wanted more of it.

Clearly term limits are aggravating our politicians, and that's probably the best reason to keep them. When the politicians start providing the quality of leadership they're paid for, they can start talking about getting to hold their offices longer.