Alec MacGillis, a reporter at The Washington Post, took to its op-ed page, penning a nearly 2,000-word diatribe on how much the Senate sucks today.
I don’t think he’s right. But he’s fumbled the ball so badly that it’s hard to know if he would be right (or would write the same op-ed) if he included all the relevant facts. MacGillis complains about the Senate as it is today without explaining the Senate as it was intended to be.
What’s that mean?
In one thousand, nine hundred and four words, MacGillis found a way to discuss how the Senate has changed since the Founders’ vision of this nation was first expressed without a mention of the single biggest change to the Senate in that time.
The year was 1913, and the change was the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment.
To claim to analyze the U.S. Senate today and how its performance may or may not comport with the dreams, wishes or wisdom of the Founders with nary a mention of the Seventeenth Amendment — which provided for the direct election of senators — is to render that analysis irrelevant.
In the original Senate, each Senator was selected by his state legislature and was, thus, accountable to the state legislators and inextricably linked to that state’s legislative leadership. The Seventeenth Amendment got rid of all that.
Think of the difference that would make in the way the Senate works. Think about lobbying and campaigns. Think about unfunded mandates and Spending Clause restrictions. Think about any legislative debate that has involved the term “Beltway mentality.” Bigger yet, think about the entire conception of federalism and the “states’ rights” debate.
The fact is the Senate of today is not at all the Senate that was created — or intended — by the Founders. Compared to the Seventeenth Amendment, the distinctions and changes that MacGillis discusses pale in comparison.
Although this August recess may be leading progressives to nightmares about the “Gang of Six,” the scenario presented by MacGillis is dramatically incomplete at helping any reader reach the understanding he claims to be seeking — the way Jefferson, Washington or any other Founder would view today’s Senate.
I, for one, think James Madison would fall over — and, once he recovered, ask why, with the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment, we decided to get rid of the best federalism check created by the Constitution.
(There’s my 400-word response, Mr. MacGillis.)
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Chris Geidner is the award-winning senior political editor at D.C.'s Metro Weekly and has written for The Atlantic Online, The American Prospect, Advocate.com, Salon and other publications, as well as at his blog, Law Dork. In 2011, he received the Excellence in News Writing Award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his coverage of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal. Prior to moving to D.C. in 2009, he served as an attorney on the senior staff at the Ohio Attorney General's Office and had earlier worked for a leading Columbus law firm. An extended biography can be found
This argument seems a little ahistorical, Chris. Federalism in theory is all well and good, but as far as I understand it, the 17th made Senate candidates less susceptible to special interests, not more.
For better or worse, state and local candidates and politics receive less attention from voters and press than federal. There’s way more overt corruption across nearly every state house than you find in Congress. Just looking at the state of the California and New York legislatures should give pause.
But I’m a federalism skeptic anyway, crossing my fingers for the federalization of Medicaid.
I understand the problems that existed in the pre-17th Amendment Senate. But, I also thinks it’s impossible to think those issues couldn’t have been addressed in some other way than the 17th (and the growing, populist trend even before the 17th within some, particularly Western states, to allow for direct election anyway). But, the Populist Movement happened.
Interestingly, I view your one premise — “state and local candidates and politics receive less attention from voters and press than federal” — as more of a conclusion or, at the least, a situation exacerbated by the 17th.
Regardless of what I think, though, Madison certainly would be astounded by the 17th. And MacGillis’s op-ed is very much incomplete without it.