A common debate this year has been that of whether the 17th Amendment was a good idea or if it should be repealed. There are many arguments against the 17th Amendment, but perhaps the best is before us now with the current U.S. Senate race. Senator Kit Bond will be retiring at the end of the current term, and 18 candidates have filed for that spot. According to media and even local bloggers, however, there are really only two candidates who are vying for the seat – Roy Blunt (R) and Robin Carnahan (D). We have the 17th Amendment largely to thank for that.
No other candidate can compete financially with these two candidates. Conservative estimates say that the race will take over 10 million dollars to win. This is out of control.
According to Article I, Section III of the U.S. Constitution, “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote.” This was the states’ way of protecting themselves against an overreaching federal government. According to the “Father of the Constitution,” James Madison, “The state legislatures also ought to have some means of defending themselves against the encroachments of the national government…And what better means can be provided than by giving them some share in, or rather make them a constituent part of, the national government?” The state legislature provided a check on the senators in DC.
With the ratification of the 17th Amendment, the states lost that power. Now, rather than U.S. Senators getting elected by proving to state legislatures that they will act in the best interest of the state, they are forced to raise tens of millions of dollars to saturate the television, internet and radio with advertisements promoting themselves and attempting to discredit their opponents.
So if the 17th Amendment were repealed and we were once again governed under the original intents of the Founders in the Constitution, and the Senator were being chosen by the legislators based on his loyalty to the state of Missouri, would Roy Blunt and Robin Carnahan still be the only two candidates that the media were willing to talk about? Probably not.
I agree that the 17th Amendment has turned running for the U.S. Senate into a race more about how much money candidates can raise (which means inside deals) and less about principle. However, I’m not sure that the state legislators would keep the campaigning focused on principle over positioning or power. I’m thinking of the “pay to play” policy of hiring a political consultants who also control committees, or even if there’s not out right money exchanging hands, there are favors: “log rolling.” To me, it seems that even the state legislators would be prone to supporting candidates for the US Senate based more on how their vote would help their political career more than how it would protect our freedom.
I think this is a complex problem that repealing the 17th Amendment alone will not solve. Partly, I find that citizens are not informed voters and are voting based on Party over the actual record of candidates. This combined with poor Party leadership to expose members of their own Party who are corrupt or “playing politics” instead of representing the people.
That said, repealing the 17th Amendment certainly would be a step in the right direction.
The irony of course, is that the 17th amendment was billed as a campaign finance measure to address concerns over expensive campaigning in the state capitols and favoritism, and for giving ‘the people!’ a bigger voice; but what it actually accomplished was to escalate the money required for campaigns beyond imagining, make the candidates even more beholden to even fewer moneyed interests, and reduce the influence of the people to only the thinnest passions of popular opinion. It served to take the focus of candidates concern away from issues important to those who know the states business best, the state legislators which we the people elect and who we have the chance to know best, and put it upon those who can best stir up and ride the popular passions of the day – statewide – which requires massive funding, staying on sound bites and away from more messy and substantive issues, and it reduced the Senate from the deliberative body it was designed to be, into a bunch of populist driven congressmen with triple length terms.
The 17th amendment struck a near mortal blow to the heart of Federalism, dangerously weakening the biggest check and balance of them all – the Federal govt being answerable to the states – within the system Madison and the founders worked so hard to create, and you can track the spiraling growth and reach of the federal government directly to it.
Regarding graft and politics… well… I am shocked, shocked I say, to hear graft, favoritism and corruption may work its way into politics. As Madison said,
“But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controuls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to controul the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to controul itself.”
The Founders had no illusions about the amount of seamy politics which existed in their own day, and they certainly feared how things might develop in a ‘debased posterity’ such as our own, and as such they had no notions or expectations of eliminating it, what they attempted to do, brilliantly, was to harness them to the benefit of constitutional government.
The famed system of checks and balances did not rest just on defining and arranging the different branches of government, and Federal against States, key to the checks and balances was ordering them so that theambitions of those individuals in each of those parts would work against the ambitions of those in the others.
Yes there will be some in the states who will try and feather their nest with favors and power – ‘We The People’ will never be free from our responsibility to keep a close eye on those in power (the price of liberty is eternal vigilance) – but even those shady deals will tend to benefit the interests of the States, and they will be more wary and jealous of the attempts of the Federal Govt to impose itself on, and usurp their powers within our states. As things stand now, the 17th amendment has left us with state senators who are so unconcerned with our states powers and interests as to say such as I heard Sen. Green say last week, regarding SJR25, on the floor of our senate “”What is the use of so called ‘Sovereignty’, didn’t we deal with that in the Civil War?” (I noted that and more in this post).
As a result of the 17th amendment, our state legislators have nearly zero influence on our U.S. Senators since they have little reason for concern with the concerns of our state legislators, our states have lost their voice in the Federal Govt, the 10th Amendment is nearly disregarded and it is left to ‘We The People’ to point out that something’s deeply wrong here.
It is hard to see how the Fed Govt would be able to consider mandating the purchasing decisions of the citizens of the states, if they were answerable to those relatively few state legislators whose turf they now so recklessly stomp across.
The 17th amendment, like the 18th (prohibition), was a poorly thought out attempt to better things, has proved a colossal failure, and needs to be repealed as well. Pronto.
A one-term limit (of 4 yrs!) would be better. Repealing the 17th would curtail the outrageous spending, but not the politicking. And our politicians don’t need MORE power and insulation from the governed. Cutting the power of incumbency is something more easily fixed. Maybe allow more than one term, but not consecutively!