Timothy Birdnow

Dana Mathewson and I were discussing the direct election of Senators and had a decent exchange.

From Dana:

Can't help wondering if the Founders ever foresaw people getting into Congress solely for themselves? They must have, since there were people around, even then, who were opportunists. Aaron Burr springs to mind. . .

This from Tim: I'm sure they did. That's why they set up the Senate the way they did; they were supposed to be appointed by the states, not elected. The Founders figured that the House would be full of scoundrels but the Senate would be more people serving for the sake of service. They also figured the states would be where the power resided, so scoundrels would seek state offices. Sad it didn't work out.

From Dana:

I can't remember the amendment that switched us to direct voting for senators. I was arguing last year with Friend Ken and he said he couldn't see that it would make any difference to switch back, it would still be scoundrels doing the voting. I finally got his attention when I said "If the state representatives still picked the senators, do you think you'd ever have heard of Senator Hillary Clinton, or Senator Al Franken -- just for starters?" He had to conceded that argument.

This from Tim:

That was the 17th, ratified in 1913. I find it fascinating; the first ten amendments were put in the Constitution immediately and for over a hundred years only 7 were added, but since then we've added another ten, which shows how much the Progressives have monkeyed with the system we had in place.

The Senate more resembles the House now, with the bitter partisan infighting (despite a veneer of "comity") that never happened in the old days; these guys were pillars of their communities and not necessarily career politicians. The amendment to change to popular vote was actually done to "clean up" the system as people who wanted to be Senators could contribute money to key politicians in the state legislatures and this was supposed to fix that - instead it now means would be Senators must raise HUGE amounts of money to buy the public instead. And they have to vote not in the best interest of the public or the states but instead have to buy future votes with money from the treasury.

The Progressive era - the era of big government - is directly correlated to this amendment. It was one of the cornerstones, along with the Federal Reserve Act and the national income tax, of the rise of the imperial government.

And while we would have scoundrels electing Senators they would be scoundrels who themselves face election - and thus would not dare wish crooks or liars onto a public that could well vote THEM out of office.

Dana responds:

Hmmm... Last point is excellent, Tim. It would force citizens to pay more attention to those whom they elect at the state level, which is something I fear we pay too little attention to. In the early days of the Republic it was far easier to watch the locals because of the physical distances involved. No radio, TV, any of that stuff. Washington DC was pretty far away for most of us.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:07 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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