I agree with Steve Benen that repealing the 17th Amendment (providing for the direct election of U.S. Senators) seems like a kooky idea, especially coming from a faction that thinks the government has too much power over the people. But I have begun taking the idea more seriously in recent years. I definitely would not support repealing the 17th Amendment alone, without other progressive reforms. But I believe our form of government cannot actually function at an acceptable level of efficiency if the Senate is effectively nothing more than a smaller, less democratic version of the House.
What I have come to believe is that we were blessed with a very atypical situation in the latter half of the 20th Century, where there was very significant ideological overlap and neither of the two major parties could command enough party loyalty to act in a parliamentary fashion in the Senate. This was already the case in the lead-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but it became even more true in the aftermath of that vote, as the South began the long slow process of transforming itself from a monolithically Democratic region to a monolithically Republican region. But now that the process has been completed (at least, in the Deep South), the two parties are diametrically opposed to each other. This means that we cannot pay our bills on time.
I’d have to write a much longer piece to really explain myself here, but the brief version is that I’d rather abolish the Senate than go back to the way things were during the Robber Baron Era. But I’d rather have the state legislatures pick senators than have the Senate function as a small, dysfunctional House.
The Founding Fathers were not dummies. They wanted the Senate to be insulated from the passions of the day. None of this Terri Schiavo shit that can infect the body politic and make it act temporarily insane. So, they made sure the senators’ terms were longer than the president’s, and that only a third of the senate would be up for recertification every election year. They did not subject the senators to the direct judgment of the public. The whole point was to keep them above the fray.
The Tea Party folks are less concerned about this independence than they are with the senators being dependent on the approval of the state legislatures. They believe that the federal government was more responsive to the states when they had to answer to the state governments instead of the people. They are probably right about that, but that is not a reason why I would consider supporting repeal of the 17th Amendment. In fact, it’s the corruption that traditionally accompanied the selection of senators that mainly inspired the amendment, and preventing or minimalizing the return of that kind of corruption would be the prerequisite for considering repeal.
Of course, the American people would probably never go for it, since it takes power out of their hands. They have been too indoctrinated into the idea that democracy is good to notice that we don’t live in a democracy, and we’re never supposed to live in one. At least as important as having a government that is accountable to the people is having a government that doesn’t devolve into civil war or fall apart as states secede. Our Constitution was formed as a stitch-work of compromise. Some of the original compromises are no longer necessary. But some of the fixes are no longer working as intended. The 17th Amendment is one of these.
