It is clear the Framers wanted the Senate to be different from the very start. There are no other Federal elected offices that have a six-year term. The term of office is longer than the President and three times longer than Representatives. It seems the Framers wanted the Senate to be check on the Peoples House in Congress. By making the term of office this long, they put an element of stability into their legislature. The House was designed to be responsive to the will of the people, but the Senate was more an instrument of State Governments.
Up until 1913, Senators were elected by State legislatures. This was intended to give the Senators an ability to focus on the issues at hand without the direct pressure of the populous. The thinking is they would be able to look more dispassionately at the issues if they did not have to face the voters of their States.
The Dog thinks the change to a more direct election of Senators is a good thing. The people should choose their representation as directly as possible. Still, if we were still electing Senators by vote of the legislature, there might be more cohesion in the Democratic caucus, then again there is no way to know if we would have a Democratic majority or not.
Another problem with the Senate is the pace at which is does business. The rules of the Senate combined with parliamentary procedure ensure the "Greatest Deliberative Body in the World" moves with all the agility of a Mastodon wallowing through a cold ice age swamp. As we have seen even a small minority can hold up and delay legislation, as long as they are disciplined.
This is compounded by the nature of the people in the Senate today, namely they are old. The average age for a sitting U.S. Senator is 63 years old. Now there are plenty of folks who are active and focused at this age, but you have to remember that this is the average age, not the top end. 60% of the Senate is 60 years old or older. 25% are 70 or older. It is a fact of life that folks tend to slow down as they age. It has very little to do with whether they are mentally sharp or not, older bodies tend to move slower.
This creates an issue as well with mental flexibility. In general, older folks are set in their ways. They have made up their minds about issues long ago and are less likely to let new information influence their thinking. Again that the Senate would be older and more thoughtful is a feature the framers intended, not a bug. It is part of why they set the minimum age for the Senate higher than the House.
However, in our fast paced and accelerating society this might not serve the interests of the nation as well as it did in the past. The pace of life has increased almost immeasurably from the time of the found of our nation. The Framers did not even envision the Congress needing to be in session all year long when they wrote the Constitution. They had no conception of their fledgling nation growing to over 300 million citizens and covering nearly 1/3 of North America. Even with a large staff the ability to correlate huge amounts of information and come to a good decision is a difficult thing.
All of this leaves us with a Senate that is often behind the public on issues of policy. We see this in the Health Care Reform debate where public opinion polls show a strong majority of the nation wants a Public Option and reform, yet Senators seem to feel it is too much too soon. Now obviously there is a role that the 1 million dollars day the Insurance industry is pumping into lobbying plays in this, but even that goes to long terms and old folks.
Senators who are set in their ways, who are not as accountable as the President and the House to the people of their state, are clearly more likely to fail to understand the urgency of the problems the nation faces. They work in an environment where it is okay to take a long time, where things are set up to take a long time. They work where most of the folks are retirement age or better. They are a hugely powerful group, given there are only 100 of them. All this leads to a detachment from their states and from the needs of the voters. They can even make choices which they know their constituents don't like, since most folks are not going to remember or be fired up about a vote made four years previously.
This leads to a problem, the Senate, while designed to be more deliberative, is now too much of a drag on the ability of the nation to address its problems. It has been too successful in slowing the rush to change. This is not just a problem for Health Care Reform but a problem for all the issues we face currently.
The Dog never details a problem without offering a solution. One solution would be to change the term of office for Senators. This would make them more responsive to the will of the voters and bring them in line with the President. However, it would take a constitutional amendment to change this and there is very little chance such an amendment would be passed by the Senate.
Luckily there is another way, which is already provided for in the system we have. Every Senator should have a primary challenge, every cycle. There are those in the party structure who will tell you this is insane. The cost of a primary will just add to the cost of running and winning. They will also tell you primaries can tear a party apart and make it more likely the Republicans will win. To all of this the Dog says "Piffle".
Six years is an eternity in our fast paced world. Six years ago the Republicans held both Houses of Congress and the White House. They had a majority of the State Houses and legislatures. Now this is completely reversed, with the Democrats holding all of those advantages. To say the political thinking of the nation has change is an understatement on the level of saying the burning of the Library of Alexandria was minor property dispute!
Given that things can and do change very quickly in our politics and nation, why shouldn't every Senator start out by having to reaffirm the support of the party members of their state? Just look at what a strong primary challenger has done for Sen. Specter's point of view. When he changed parties this year, he was acting and talking as though he was still a Republican. He was willing to talk the Republican line about many issues and act as though he would not vote with his new caucus. Now he is not even on the list of troublesome Democratic Senators. Having Rep. Sestak announcing and running for this primary has moved Sen. Specter closer to the views of the people of Pennsylvania than he ever would have on his own.
The other reason to have more primaries is to get fresher, younger, more connected Senators elected. By moving the median age of Senators down, we get a Senate, which will be slowed only by procedure and not a natural slowing down. This opens up progressive Senators, since we do not have to wait for them to retire, die or be elected to other office to get them out of the way.
By making Senators get the approval of their party and by making it clear they do not have a free ride just because they managed to get elected once, we return the functioning of the Congress to something closer to what the Framers envisioned. There is still the long term which gives them a little leeway to put the best interest of the nation first, while still having them be accountable to the people of their states and the nation.
This will not be easy, the party structure is highly resistant to the idea of primaries for incumbents. Still, no positive change in governance is ever easy. If we are to have a government "of the people, by the people and for the people," then the people must be involved and work to make it happen, at least as much as the politicians who do the day to day work. A primary for every Senator would ensure the next major issue we face will be faced with more attention to the will of the people than Health Care Reform has been.
The floor is yours.
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