Do Reps Rep?

I bet at least once your mother (or some other figure of importance) once mentioned the adage "In causal conversation never mention religion or politics." Well, since this isn't casual conversation I'm gonna be talking politics. This will deal with two things: how our representatives in the House represent us and the issue of the direct election of Senators.

First-the Congressmen, because we need to lay a foundation for the second point I wanted to make.

The point of U.S. Congressmen is to directly represent the people, in small groups. This means you should be able to walk up to your congressman, give him a piece of your mind and return to your business. However, it is not like that nowadays. Members of the House of Representatives represent approximately 600,000 people each. Some more, some less depending on district size and "at large" reps such as in Vermont, Wyoming and Rhode Island. This isn't what the framers of the constitution had in mind. They wanted the representative to be humble people who do their civic duty then return to normal life. They are now political giants. The appeal of power was too great.

We now have Career Politicians as our representatives. These incumbents, through a variety of factors beat out challengers almost 90% of the time and continue to reign over their constituents. This is mainly in part to the allure of power that comes with being a rep. Even though you're elected to a 2 year term, you still have a plethora of constituents who are able to keep you in office. The allure of money and prestige has kept many of these men and women in office for term after term after term. This has ruined the very essence of being a representative: a self made man or woman who serves for a few terms than returns to normal life.

Does this seem right to anyone? It surely doesn't to me. Wouldn't you much rather have your representative be someone you've actually meet more than one. I don't say you need to know the person, but more visibility would be nice when it comes to someone making big federal decisions that affect your very life.

Now for something else: the direct election of U.S. Senators.

At the turn of the century Progressivism was sweeping the nation. It was a great thing for the most part, but a big error was passing the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. This amendment made it so U.S. Senators would be elected by popular vote of the whole state. You know I was talking about the lack of visibility with reps? Yeah, this is even worse.

Think about it. In the state of Massachusetts there are approximately 6 million people. Those 6 million people get to pick two of their own to be senators. Chances are they've never meet these people, they just hear their belifs on the news. This is very dangerous. These people have a huge responsibility to the state at large, but no accountability to individual people. If the method had stayed the same, we would have less of a problem with career senators making truckloads of money, manipulating the population and staying in office.

This is what used to happen. Your state's legislature would choose senators. Thats right, the people who represent the two or three towns around you would pick who was your senator. Doesn't this make a whole lot more sense? It seems to me that you would want someone from your community choosing the big wigs in Washington. They would have more accountability to the constituents, therefore the representatives would be more careful in who they choose, and a better stock of senators would currently be sitting in the chambers in the capitol building.

All and all, I blame people who took reform a little too far. The Progressive Era was fantastic for the country, but when people start steamrolling through reform, things like this happens. People take things a little too far and then we end up with senators serving for longer than my parents have been around.

I bet I'm gonna get some flack from this...so bring it on ;)