The first and last time I visited with Mel Hancock, he had two books on his desk.

They spoke volumes about the thoughtfulness of the former U.S. representative from Springfield, Mo., who died Sunday morning at age 82.

One of the books was a collection of the Federalist Papers, essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and other founders outlining their reasoning behind the U.S. Constitution. The documents are akin to holy writings for conservatives, and Mr. Hancock was nothing if not conservative.

The other book on his desk was about the practice of early Greek democracy. Mr. Hancock recently had read a chapter describing how, in some elements of the ancient Greek government, there was an age requirement to be an elected official. His time in and out of government taught him that might be a good idea. People acquire wisdom with age, he said.

I was there that day, visiting with Mr. Hancock in a nondescript white shack in his back yard, in the shadow of an impressive forest of walnut trees, because of a letter he had written to the Springfield News-Leader, where I was the opinion page editor. Inside the shack was a smartly decorated office where Mr. Hancock spent much of his time, reading, writing, visiting with guests and looking at his walnut trees.

In his letter, Mr. Hancock did something almost unheard of in politics today: He admitted a mistake.

While he's best known for the Missouri constitutional amendment bearing his name that limits the state's ability to raise revenue without public votes, Mr. Hancock also was an early supporter of term limits. He helped Missouri pass such an amendment in 1992.

"I was wrong," he wrote plainly in the letter that spurred my visit.

Such a believer in term limits was Mr. Hancock that he term-limited himself, refusing to run for a fifth term in Congress in 1996 despite all the advantages of incumbency. In time, he looked more closely at how term limits had negatively affected the Missouri Legislature. He came to believe, much like the Founders, that term limits were a mistake.

In Federalist Paper No. 53, Madison lays out the case against term limits: "The greater the proportion of new members of Congress, and the less the information of the bulk of the members, the more apt they be to fall into the snares that may be laid before them."

The wisdom of that statement had been borne out in the Missouri Legislature at the time of Mr. Hancock's letter, in which he decried the resignation of then speaker pro tem, Republican Carl Bearden of St. Charles, to cash in and take a lobbying job before his term expired.

Term limits were forcing some people out of government to the detriment of government, Mr. Hancock said, and offering incentive for others to spend their time in the Legislature lining up their next job.

"There are a lot of good people in government," Mr. Hancock said. "But the good people leave."

Since Mr. Hancock went public in 2007 with his change of heart on term limits, several Republicans who otherwise might not have had the courage followed his lead.

He should be remembered for that bit of statesmanship. The founders and the Greeks would have applauded his evolved wisdom.

— Tony Messenger