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Is This a Way to Avoid Future Roland Burrises?
Even if Roland Burris did nothing wrong to obtain former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich’s interim appointment to the United States Senate, Blagojevich’s corruption would have Burris facing his constituents through a cloud of suspicion.
Wisconsin’s senator, Russ Feingold, has a proposal that might prevent future Roland Burris-style imbroglios. But, a little background is in order.
The US Constitution, of course, originally stipulated that senators be elected by their state’s legislatures, a measure reflecting the Framer’s belief that the upper chamber of the US Congress should be composed of wealthy, landed, mature men not susceptible to direct influence from voters. (While being believers in a Republic, the Framers viewed pure Democracy warily, proving that while they were great, they weren’t perfect.)
The direct election of US Senators was instituted with the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913. But the amendment, while allowing the election of people to fill the unexpired terms of senators who resigned or died, didn’t mandate it. It’s that loophole that allows the spectacles like the ones we’ve recently watched play out in places like Illinois and New York, where governors appointed senators.
In the late 18th-century, there was good reason for having governors pick interim senators. Communications and transportation, necessary for the administration of elections, were cumbersome and slow. Those should no longer be obstructions to directly electing interim senators. That’s why Feingold’s proposal mandating such elections nationwide is probably way overdue.
Of course, one look at the long-lasting 2008 campaign between incumbent Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken in Minnesota will confirm that even the direct election of senators is no insurance against unseemly spectacle.
Given the realities of human nature, reforms will always struggle to outpace the ingenious methods people devise to beat whatever system that’s instituted. (Reform is always a reactive and an ongoing enterprise.) But Feingold’s proposal, which seems to reflect the opinions of many people whatever their political persuasions, would have, had it been in effect last year, probably prevented Roland Burris from becoming a United States Senator.
[This is being crossposted at my personal blog.]
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4 Responses to “Is This a Way to Avoid Future Roland Burrises?”
“While being believers in a Republic, the Framers viewed pure Democracy warily, proving that while they were great, they weren’t perfect.”
Sorry, cannot disagree more. The current crisis, and the pandering to special interests that both caused it and is now going to make it worse, is proof of their foresight. The bottom line is they were well read, well educated, and well versed in the perils of pure democracy.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been about 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: '>From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage. – Alexander Fraser Tytler
I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. – James Madison
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. – Thomas Jefferson
When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. – Benjamin Franklin
When a self-governing people confer upon their government the power to take from some and give to others, the process will not stop until the last bone of the last taxpayer is picked bare. – Kershner's First Law
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the party that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections. – Lord Acton
Austin, interesting comments.
I suppose that it depends on to whose corruptions you decide to give preference.
Virtually all winning political combinations, whether under republics or democracies, are what I call coalitions of selfishness, constituencies brought together by their perceived self-interest.
The Roman Republic, as was true of the monarchy that preceded it and the empire that succeeded it, enshrined the domination of elites and in so doing institutionalized the kind of classism that ensured resentment, restiveness, revolution, and civil war.
Of course, groups allowed greater direct influence on government appropriations and taxation will seek to benefit themselves. Human beings have a built-in penchant for acting selfishly. But given that reality, it seems to me far better to allow the 2000-pound pink elephant into the tent with a sense of ownership than outside of the tent with its resentments. The failure to engage the masses in political decisionmaking was the undoing of Rome's Republic.
The genius of the United States is that, through amendment and changing customs, the tent has expanded allowing for the maintenance of the balance struck by the Founders/Framers in their two succeeding roles: liberty and mutual accountability.
No system of government is perfect. All are, as we Lutherans put it, “emergency orders,” each at their best designed to, for only periods of time, coerce us into the kind of mutual accountability necessary for societies to work.
But only democracies maximize the sense of ownership needed to blunt, deflect, and lessen the resentments that human beings naturally feel, even under the best of circumstances, at considering the needs or aspirations of others.
The reason Jesus offers the Golden Rule and God gave the Ten Commandments, those in the Judeo-Christian faiths believe, is precisely because such consideration of others is so foreign to our fallen natures.
Churchill was right, I think, in saying that, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
Thanks again for your thoughtful comments, Austin.
Mark –
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I want to make one clarification. I, too, believe in Democracy, and that it is the best form of goverment that can exist, as people are not perfect.
However, my main point, which may have been lost in my quotes, is that unfettered Democracy is not good. Look at California and their experience with Government by Initiative.
The beauty of the initial concept of the election of Government in the Constitution, as envisioned by our Founders, was to have not only a separation of powers, but different paths for each to election – electors for the President (who were NOT bound to vote for any specific candidate in the beginning), direct election for the House, and State representation via the Senate (to limit the Federalism urges they knew would develop to the detriment of the States power and rights).
I think that was brilliant, and if those had not been either dismantled or reduced in influence, we would have a better Federal Government. IMHO.
Austin:
I apologize for taking so long to get back with you. Lent starts today and
the preparation for that can be insane.
Your point is well taken. In fact, I think that the story of the American
Revolution can only be told in two parts. The first is in terms of the principle
of liberty we see at play in the Declaration of Independence. The second
revolves around the nation building, with the principle of mutual accountability
enshrined in law. Unfettered liberty is tyranny as surely as unfettered
government power. Washington and Adams, for example, knew this. Jefferson never
acknowledged it, though in the Louisiana Purchase and other acts, he acted with more
antidemocratic imperiousness than any leader he ever condemned.
Thanks for writing.
Mark
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