It was a chief demand of the Populists, an effort to cut corrupt state legislatures out of the national discussion by having voters elect each state’s senators.
Remember, the U.S. Constitution, as originally drafted, left the selection of each state’s senators to the states’ respective legislatures, an effort designed to cool political passions and lessen the hold that the rabble might have on the federal government.
The states, however, were universally corrupt, beholden to the money interests of the day — to the railroads and big tobacco — and the small farmers in the South and Midwest who made up what became known as the Populist Party found themselves frozen out of the decisionmaking and feeling fleeced.
So the movement began, the Farmers Alliance and People’s Party, calling for monetary reform, regulation of the banks and railroads, and political reform, including the direct election of senators.
While much of the reforms sought by the Populists failed to become law, the party had an impact as the Progressives, a more urban, middle-class movement, altered the way we think about government, instituting an array of regulations and restrictions we now take for granted (bans on child labor, the 40-hour week, health and safety inspections, etc.) and some basic changes in the electoral process — including the 17th amendment, which forced senate candidates onto a popular ballot.
It was a victory for democracy, giving the American people another opportunity to choose for themselves people who are supposed to act on their behalf in matters of war, taxes, etc.
Flashfoward nearly a century and we have today’s most notable populist movement, the rightwing Tea Party, advocating for repeal of the 17th amendment “convinced that returning to the pre-17th Amendment system would reduce the power of the federal government and enhance state rights.”
Senate candidates have to raise so much money to run that they become beholden to special interests, party members say. They argue that state legislators would not be as compromised and would choose senators who truly put their state’s needs first.
The argument is an interesting one, if a bit backward looking and anti-democratic. It acknowledges the Founders’ concerns, which included the desire to have a house of elites to offset the people’s house — similar to the arrangement in Great Britain.
To Madison, Hamilton and most of the other authors of the Constitution, allowing states to appoint the Senate was the linchpin of the entire federalist system and the real reason there are two houses of Congress. It may be true that appointed senators, accountable only to state legislators, would never approve of many useful federal mandates designed to put the national interest above local parochialism — including everything from the minimum wage to the new health care reform law.
That in itself should be an argument against repeal (though, I admit, small-government types will not agree), but there is a better one that has nothing to do with political philosophy or ideology. Should New Jersey voters trust the folks who have made such a mess of the state to pick the people who represent us in Washington? Should the people in Albany, who have become national laughingstocks in their dysfunctionality, get to pick which New Yorkers should head south? Would these ethically compromised men and women do a better job than we do?
Do I need to answer?
Hank Kalet 