John Jay explained the rationale for setting up the Senate the way it is in Federalist Papers No. 64. It was always intended that the Senate would be made up of the “most enlightened and respectable citizens” and people “most distinguished by their abilities and virtue.” Originally, senators were selected by state legislatures, and this was a deliberate design.
As the select assemblies for choosing the President, as well as the State legislatures who appoint the senators, will in general be composed of the most enlightened and respectable citizens, there is reason to presume that their attention and their votes will be directed to those men only who have become the most distinguished by their abilities and virtue, and in whom the people perceive just grounds for confidence. The Constitution manifests very particular attention to this object. By excluding men under thirty-five from the first office, and those under thirty from the second, it confines the electors to men of whom the people have had time to form a judgment, and with respect to whom they will not be liable to be deceived by those brilliant appearances of genius and patriotism, which, like transient meteors, sometimes mislead as well as dazzle. If the observation be well founded, that wise kings will always be served by able ministers, it is fair to argue, that as an assembly of select electors possess, in a greater degree than kings, the means of extensive and accurate information relative to men and characters, so will their appointments bear at least equal marks of discretion and discernment.
It’s easy to look at our present Senate and laugh at John Jay’s high hopes. But it pays to look carefully at Jay’s words. When he warns against political meteors that dazzle and deceive us with their genius and patriotism, he is warning us against demagogues. The Founders expected no shortage of demagogues to emerge in the House of Representatives, which was always intended as the People’s House. The Senate was designed as a counterbalance. It was always supposed to be somewhat reactionary. It was expected that the populist impulses of the House would be tempered by the more august and deliberative upper chamber.
Senators were supposed to be largely free from day-to-day political pressures. Their terms were long (six years) and staggered (so that only a third of the body face reelection each two years). And the elections were not direct, but removed to the discretion of the legislatures. The Seventeenth Amendment changed that by providing for direct, popular elections to the Senate. It was the second amendment of the Progressive Era (the income tax was the first, Prohibition was the third, Female Suffrage the fourth).
I support the Seventeenth Amendment and I think it is better to have more day-to-day political pressure on senators than the Founding Fathers intended. But it comes with a price. The Senate now acts too much like the House, and partisanship rules the body and our whole political culture in a way the Founders hoped to prevent.
But, for me, the bigger problem is that House now acts like the Senate. The House is supposed to be filled with ordinary people: teachers, labor organizers, small business owners, country lawyers, etc. They are supposed to be passionate advocates for the little guy. If they try to give the whole treasury away to the poor (as they should be at least tempted to do) then it’s supposed to be up to the Senate to stop them and represent the rational interests of business.
The Founders didn’t anticipate the two-party system. They wanted a two-chamber system. And, I admit, the two-chamber system (one populist, one cautious and conservative) would work better than the two-party system. What we have now is a bunch of conservative-pandering representatives in the House.
I’m not sure what John Jay would have to say about a Senator Al Franken. I suspect he’d think him a better fit for the House. But I think John Jay might reconsider if he could see how many members of the House are indistinguishable from senators in their adherence to business interests over the interests of the people.
In any case, it doesn’t bother me so much to see senators come from the upper classes (hello Caroline Kennedy). I’m much more concerned that the House is filled with conservatives who hate progressives.
