perfidy

Murdoc links to an article by the infamous Instapundit regarding the repeal of the even more infamous seventeenth amendment. Which one is that, you ask? Is that the one that gives the vote to chicks? Or is it the one that says Vice Presidents don’t have to be elected, except when a plurality of the congress is not in session or whatever that one was?

No, the seventeenth is the amendment that dictated that from that moment on, moronic senators would be chosen directly by the people, rather than by state legislatures. Many would argue that this makes no difference whatsoever. If anything, we’ll at least have more photogenic senators. And since most people think that America is a democracy, well this direct election thing makes that delusion more palatable.

Neither Glenn nor Murdoc know what to make of this. Glenn links to an article on the National Review by Bruce Bartlett. Old Brucie has some interesting thoughts on the matter:

The Constitution originally provided that senators would be chosen by state legislatures. The purpose was to provide the states — as states — an institutional role in the federal government. In effect, senators were to function as ambassadors from the states, which were expected to retain a large degree of sovereignty even after ratification of the Constitution, thereby ensuring that their rights would be protected in a federal system.

The role of senators as representatives of the states was assured by a procedure, now forgotten, whereby states would “instruct” their senators how to vote on particular issues. Such instructions were not conveyed to members of the House of Representatives because they have always been popularly elected and are not expected to speak for their states, but only for their constituents.

You can see the logic there. The people have their own direct representatives in the House. And of course, they have some influence on the choice of senators through who they elect to their state legislature.

Bartlett argues that the seventeenth amendment (and the never to be sufficiently damned sixteenth) inaugurated the explosive growth of big government.

The 17th amendment was ratified in 1913. It is no coincidence that the sharp rise in the size and power of the federal government starts in this year (the 16th amendment, establishing a federal income tax, ratified the same year, was also important). As George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki has noted, prior to the 17th amendment, senators resisted delegating power to Washington in order to keep it at the state and local level. "As a result, the long term size of the federal government remained fairly stable during the pre-Seventeenth Amendment era," he wrote.

Prof. Zywicki also finds little evidence of corruption in the Senate that can be traced to the pre-1913 electoral system. By contrast, there is much evidence that the post-1913 system has been deeply corruptive. As Sen. Miller put it, "Direct elections of Senators … allowed Washington’s special interests to call the shots, whether it is filling judicial vacancies, passing laws, or issuing regulations."

So the new style Senators elected by the people wouldn’t stand up to federal power like the old senators did. But I think that Bartlett has the cart before the horse. The passage of these amendments was evidence that the growth of federal power was already happening. They are effects, rather than causes. To be sure, the new wimpy direct elected senators probably did grease the wheels of big gubmint. That trend would have won out in any event.

The logic of large scale industrialism had a huge influence on politics, and of course business. But not just in the obvious ways. The idea that things can be managed, and that a sufficiently bright or well informed group could manage things like, say, the government was very appealing to the predecessors of idiot statists like Mitt Romney, discussed in the previous post. This logic dominated American politics for a century, and still does. Its major success was winning the Second World War through industrial means, and its downfall was arguably Vietnam, where a bunch of systems analysis mooks like McNamara allowed the most powerful country in the world to be defeated by small people in pajamas.

Since then, the small has made a comeback, in a number of surprisingly dissonant ways. You have the small government conservatives and the libertarians telling people to get small. You have technologists in the open source movement talking about small networks of people accomplishing amazing things, and you have artsy liberal types wanting to live small, with hand crafted cheeses made by authentic third world cheesiers. I think that in some important ways, this is all related. It’s post industrialism without the postmodernism. We, inoculated with irony and sarcasm, are unable to buy into the industrial age slogans. They seem at best silly, and typically rather pathetic to us. We are a small minded people.

We’ll never see the repeal of the seventeenth. Even though it might be a good idea. For one thing, given the explosion in gerrymandering, it’s the only national elective body that is democratically elected. Rotten boroughs and safe seats are the norm in the People’s house. For another, there’s no compelling evidence (comparable to senate seats empty for years thanks to state house logjams) that the current system is in any way broken. Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, and Rick Santorum don’t count as evidence.

Maybe we need to create another house of congress. The senate would go back to the old style, where senators get appointed by the states. The House would continue to represent the political parties and special interests. But a new house would have members selected by a new method. Anyone who can get a million verified signatures from registered voters is in. Voters can remove their names from a list at any time. Anytime a candidate falls below a million names, he’s out. Voters can support more than one candidate. In an internet age, this is possible.

Whiners and complainers want more public participation in politics. This would get it. The new House would share many of the powers of the other two. Any bill has to pass all three houses before becoming law. But lets give the new house something special. The Senate has the whole advice and consent thing, and the House has control of the budget. This new house would have the power to cancel existing laws by a simple majority vote. It could remove from office anyone not confirmed by the Senate by a two-thirds vote.

That would make politics fun again. But we need a cool name.