tfl: The Flatiron Life

Archive for the 'Rod Blagojevich' Tag

17th Amendment –> Blago

Monday, 23 February 2009 Jacob Tomaw

I have been meaning to post about the Blagojavich scandal and the 17th Amendment for a while. In my procrastination, George Will beat me to it.

Sen Russ Feingold want to amend the 17th Amendment to force special elections when there is a vacancy in the Senate. However repealing the 17th Amendment would restore some sovereignty to the states and put more incentive on Senators being interested in their state than in being reelected and catering to special interests.

Here Mr. Will spells out how things have gone wrong (but you should read the whole thing),

Furthermore, grounding the Senate in state legislatures served the structure of federalism. Giving the states an important role in determining the composition of the federal government gave the states power to resist what has happened since 1913 — the progressive (in two senses) reduction of the states to administrative extensions of the federal government.

Severing senators from state legislatures, which could monitor and even instruct them, made them more susceptible to influence by nationally organized interest groups based in Washington. Many of those groups, who preferred one-stop shopping in Washington to currying favors in all the state capitals, campaigned for the 17th Amendment. So did urban political machines, which were then organizing an uninformed electorate swollen by immigrants. Alliances between such interests and senators led to a lengthening of the senators’ tenures.

The Framers gave the three political components of the federal government (the House, Senate and presidency) different electors (the people, the state legislatures and the electoral college as originally intended) to reinforce the principle of separation of powers, by which government is checked and balanced.

Although liberals give lip service to “diversity,” they often treat federalism as an annoying impediment to their drive for uniformity. Feingold, who is proud that Wisconsin is one of only four states that clearly require special elections of replacement senators in all circumstances, wants to impose Wisconsin’s preference on the other 46. Yes, he acknowledges, they could each choose to pass laws like Wisconsin’s, but doing this “state by state would be a long and difficult process.” Pluralism is so tediously time-consuming.

If you like the way politics have played out for the last 100 years in Washington, I am sure you are a big fan of the 17th Amendment and the concentration of power, strengthening special interests, and irresponsible government it produced. If you think things would be a little different, perhaps it is time to support diversity, checks and balance, and state sovereignty.