Unfortunately, this new century has proved coarser, and at least as divisive, than the last. In the last century, expletives were embarrassingly deleted. Today, we exult politicos who exhibit toughness with utterances like “fucking retards.” Such cursing, if imaginative or clever, would at least entertain. What has been actually uttered instead proves that the freeness of speech has not increased the value of words.
So, the veneer of politeness that has been a part of U.S. Senate’s practice and traditions has always appealed to me. The Senate exhibits the kind of verbal exchanges I imagine took place among the people living in the 19th century, at least those who populate novels set in that era. I admit these feelings about the upper legislative branch are sentimental. It is realistic to assume that the more politely Senator Jones talks about “my good friend Senator Smith” the deeper Jones’ knife rests in Senator Smith’s back. Politeness and disingenuousness often exist side by side.
Except for those within the orbit of the Senators themselves, I do not think there are too many people who believe the Senate is an institution fit for the 21st century. The faults most often cited are some of the rules and the traditions of the institution. I think this is a misunderstanding of the situation. It is the design of the Senate and the Senators themselves that are fault. And when I blame the Senators themselves, I do not mean willful wrongdoing on their part in the current legislative game of chicken being played.
Diogenesian searches in the U.S. Senate are as likely to turn up honest people as anywhere else. It is not that Senators are less honest than the rest of us, nor more venal, today or at any other time. (Though I would advise being as aware of one’s wallet while conversing in a quorum of Senators as while standing on a subway platform.) The Senators’ problems stem from something else. It is not the fault of the Senators, who are only playing by the rules we have allowed.
What we face in this century is something that has grown larger and more complex over the first two centuries, or so, since we enacted the Constitution. What plagues the Senate are an erosion of stature of its members and a moral dilemma of mixed loyalties that they face. Short of dissolving the legislative body entirely (which I think is the best solution) fixing the Senate involves selecting better individuals to serve there and finding a way to focus Senators’ loyalties on the institution and the performance of their sworn duties.
To fix this, we need to change two things about the Senate: the minimum requirements for serving in the Senate and how Senators are reelected. I will talk about a new way of reelecting Senators in my next post. Here, I go on to suggest a way of selecting a better quality of Senator.
The Senate was designed to have indirect election of Senators by their respective state legislatures. This selection method was discarded partly because party leaders had too much control over the process. So one way of populating the Senate with distinguished candidates, as our founders designed originally, has been eliminated. This leaves age being the only quality caveat we require of people who want to be a Senator.
I believe the quality of the Senate has been eroded because our pre-selection process is so inadequate. Nothing magical happens to a person between the ages of 25, the House minimum age, and 30, the Senate minimum age, to improve the quality of the person to serve as a Senator. Age helps, but being older, even significantly older, is not enough.
So the level of education, private or public achievement, social or class status, wealth, heredity or even experience have nothing to do with distinguishing a Senator from a Representative. Only a few, unremarkable years is the minimum requirement we use to select our most important legislators. This is a major design flaw in the construction of the Senate.
Our bicameral legislature is based on having a smaller, more select body of legislators to lord over the more pedestrian sort likely to occupy the chairs in the lower hump. Indirect election was originally thought to be one way to select people of quality to serve in the Senate. When that selection method proved faulty and Senators began being selected by popular vote, they lost the most important distinguishing feature they had over their lesser, more numerous House colleagues. We would not want a return to indirect selection, so we need to find other way is to improve the pool of people allowed to Constitutionally serve in the Senate.
A Constitutional amendment that would allow only people who have completed 10 years of service in their state legislature or in the House of Representatives, or a mix of both, is one way. This would at least give us Senators with more legislative experience than we have now.
It is fair to quibble with the length of legislative experience I suggest. Five years might be adequate. Or you can disagree with the idea that only legislative experience is required in this scheme. You might say people with a variety of backgrounds should populate the Senate. On that, I fervently disagree. Senators need to be the most experienced legislators available because they have so much more legislative responsibility than their House colleagues. Let the lesser legislatures be where people learn the trade; the Senate is too important to serve as a training school.
You might also think that the pool of eligible candidates is so restricted under this plan that there may not be enough qualified politicians available whenever a Senate seat opens. Given the normal amounts of ambition that animates our country, I doubt we will ever run into that situation. In fact, state houses and the House of Representatives may attract better people because these governing bodies would be the sole stepping stones to the Senate.
To argue no experience need apply makes little sense. Why should we not want skilled legislators to populate our most important legislative branch? In few other professions, except politics, do we select absolutely inexperienced, untested people to do the job. We don’t even require politicians to take a drug test. (Another idea for another day.)
It is not that our Senate is populated by “f’ing retards.” Far from it. They are simply not the kind of people, as a group, who should have been handed the responsibilities of an upper legislative chamber only because they became 30-years-old. If this democracy needs an elite upper chamber to check on the work of its more populist colleagues, then this distinction should at least be earned honestly.
If we can add a new, solid base of experience under the Senate’s traditional veneer of politeness, there might be hope for this century, yet.
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