[Note from Steve: This post continues a series of posts, bipartisan in spirit, that analyze the mistakes the “Founding Fathers” made in writing the Constitution, that revered “law of the land.” Why are these errors so meaningful now? Because America’s fascists have discovered them and are using them to destroy American democracy!]
One can also see what’s wrong with the US Senate by considering the Founding Fathers’ bow to states’ rights, creating an absurd and anemic clone of England’s House of Lords that’s a major drag on American democracy. (States should be administrative units, nothing more!) To use the Brits’ term, it’s always been and will always be a cock-up with its members assuming that their main responsibility to the Republic is to make sure nothing worthwhile gets done! But the Senate’s problems go far beyond the chaos created by states’ rights. The Founding Fathers were mostly aristocratic autocrats themselves (also in the British sense) who feared the participation of commoners in their fledgling democracy. (And the French Revolution hadn’t even occurred yet, so they supposed that their heads would remain attached to their bodies.) How can we avoid letting the riffraff run the country? they asked themselves.
As in the creation of the English parliament, our Founding Fathers feared that the rabble in the US House would take complete control if there were no aristocratic and dignified gentlemen in the US Senate to balance that. (Talk about rabble!: What would they think of the chaos in the US House present today?). Yet they didn’t want a president to ever become king either. (Tell that to today’s SCOTUS who essentially turned Trump into one!)
Even Trump seems to only want to become a dictator, another Il Duce (he’s too dumb to be another Putin) and not a king. He probably couldn’t even find a crown large enough to fit over his swollen head and three-ply fold-over or an ermine robe to cover his fat McD’s butt.
There’s no PM in the American system: but, in a sense, every US senator thinks he’s the PM! Not even the House Speaker can get a law passed without the approval of America’s version of the House of Lords; the US Senate is an anachronism and throwback to ancient history in England that should have been eliminated in our Constitution. And again, should a state like Iowa have as much power in the US Senate as a state like New Jersey, a fact that shows how undemocratic the Senate really is?
But the situation is much worse when we put the Senate under a microscopic, even in just one state. Consider my state of NJ: It has two senators who have to represent everyone in the state, from people in crowded Newark and Trenton to people living in the rural Delaware Water Gap area. (There might be more wolves out there in the latter’s wolf preserve than people!) A fair representation for all of them is impossible. No wonder senators so often fail to do their jobs adequately! (And look for extra financial rewards for doing it, a la Menendez?)
The US Senate also has many arcane rules that need changing too. (Most are just tradition, so they should be easy to change! Famous last and futile words!) First, consider the filibuster. With all the old-timers in the Senate (no term or age limits, remember—Feinstein basically died there, and even Moscow Mitch has avoided the embalming fluid and essentially retired while still attending occasionally), you’d think they would end this travesty if only so they wouldn’t have to worry about wearing Depends for their bladder problems while in the Senate chambers (hey, senators, you’re on C-Span!) and committee rooms. These arcane rules generally lead to wasting a lot of time when the blather and twaddle goes on and on and on; these English-style lords waste time that’s critical for getting the business of democracy done, but most don’t give a rat’s ass about that because it’s all about posturing and reelection. (But most are so old that maybe they need the nap time? Feinstein certainly took advantage of it!)
I expect that a lot of arcane rules slso exist so the senators can find the time to reminisce about days long gone by when they actually did something for the American people to justify their existence (when they started out in the House, for example!) And the ladies aren’t immune to this either. In general, US senators don’t accomplish a damn thing except obstruction, and the “advise and consent” role of these old politicians has become a complete joke with the fascist Trump and his takeover of the country. (At least I write about his incompetent nominees! The members of his Fascist Party of America don’t give a damn. My God! They approved Hogsbreath! At least Moscow Mitch joined the Alaska and Maine senators with a thumb’s down for the nomination of this incompetent pervert!)
Impeachment proceedings are good opportunities for the public to see how inadequate and ineffective the US Senate is when democracy’s continued existence is at stake. In Trump’s case, the second impeachment was especially enlightening. The US House did its job: Trump staged a coup; they impeached the seditious bastard! The US Senate failed completely. The two-senators-per-state rule took its toll. (It’s devilishly hard for Dems to control the Senate because, simply said, there are more red states than blue, even though some red states like Idaho and Montana have more buffalos and horses than people! And the Founding Fathers thought the Senate was the appropriate court to try a criminally inclined president? What a laugh! That was pure stupidity even back then, but remember that they thought they wanted to pretend to be aristocrats and most still thought that the US president was akin to a king. I guess one easy fix would have been to make the number of senators in each state proportional to human population (and not count the buffalos and horses!). It isn’t going to happen, though; America’s fascists won’t allow that now.
Of course, what’s stated above can also be said of state senates; but without states’ rights, state legislatures are superfluous and the state should just become an administrative district as they are in more normal and rational democracies. That is, states should just be administrative units; and they always need good managers, not old, incompetent, and decrepit politicians playing politics tucked away in some state senate.
In the Founding Fathers’ defense, they had no crystal balls to show them the awful consequences of what they saddled future generations of Americans with. But does that mean we can’t change things to make our democracy better, more logical, and more efficient? Too many federal judges and senators are strict constitutionalists. Their strict adherence to the that damn old document, the Constitution, and other arcane and outmoded rules for governance, is pure, selfish laziness on their part that will destroy these United States of America sooner that later!
And maybe when SCOTUS should be doing that, as with the Fourteenth Amendment, they won’t. That’s next week’s topic.