The Wisconsin Democrat, who is steeped in his state's progressive tradition, says, as would-be amenders of the Constitution often do, that he is reluctant to tamper with the document but tamper he must because the threat to the public weal is immense: Some governors have recently behaved badly in appointing people to fill U.S. Senate vacancies. Feingold's solution, of which John McCain is a co-sponsor, is to amend the 17th Amendment. It would be better to repeal it.
Does anyone else remember the time Stephen Colbert had a guest on, a female author who wrote about telling women to return to traditional gender roles and obedience to husbands and so forth? It was one of the few times I've seen a guest stump Colbert, because he made a quip to her saying something like "Yeah, I want to back the '50s." (pause) "The 1850s." To which the guest, without irony or pause said would be a great idea. Colbert was pretty clearly thrown by this, because like many of us, he underestimated how regressive modern conservatives really are.
So here is Will, preferring to return to the days of an unelected Senate. Not quite 1850, but 1913 anyway.
The Framers established election of senators by state legislators, under which system the nation got the Great Triumvirate (Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and John Calhoun) and thrived. In 1913, progressives, believing that more, and more direct, democracy is always wonderful, got the 17th Amendment ratified. It stipulates popular election of senators, under which system Wisconsin has elected, among others, Joe McCarthy, as well as Feingold.
Any understanding of the US Constitution includes the awareness that the Senate itself must approve by a 2/3 majority any proposed Constitutional amendment, so George is being disingenuous when he blithely paves over the 87 year long battle it took to pass the 17th Amendment, attributing it all to those evil Progressives. As Wiki says:
Reform efforts began as early as 1826, when direct election was first proposed.[...]
Increasingly, Senators were elected based on state referenda, similar to the means developed by Oregon. By 1912, as many as 29 states elected Senators either as nominees of party primaries, or in conjunction with a general election. [...]
Nevertheless, the Senate approved the resolution largely because of the Senators who had been elected by state-initiated reforms, many of whom were serving their first terms, and therefore were more willing to support direct election.
This was the epitome of a bubbling up grassroots change, and even after a decisive majority of States had already moved to varying forms of electing Senators, it took one of those too-rare progressive windows to get it past the conservative obstructionists in the Senate.
I do like his flexibility in employing Joe McCarthy as a bogeyman though, not often you see conservatives admitting implicitly McCarthy was not good for the country. He is also equating Feingold to McCarthy in an homage to Jonah Goldberg. Yeah, the lone Senate vote against the Patriot Act is a McCarthyite.
Also, (Will packs a lot of egregious nonsense into short paragraphs, so apologies for the meandering rebuttal) one of the people Will is extolling as a lion of the aristocratic Senate is this guy, the pro-slavery and pro-nullification John Calhoun who resigned as Vice-President over his strong feelings about the rights of States to enslave black people if their (white) citizens want to. Good example George. Did I mention the 1850s above? Let's skip Will's tired fear mongering about mob-rule and veneration of the holy and perfect founders' intent to rationalize elites picking the senior national legislative chamber.
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.
Confused? It really is as preposterous as you're thinking. He is conflating racial and gender diversity in pursuit of social justice by liberals with some kind of Federal/State power diversity.
Liberals don't espouse diversity for everything in every circumstance. If your car takes unleaded gasoline, liberals won't tell you to mix in some diesel for diversity's sake. Some things should be uniform. Like not having Slavery. Or having the people who write laws be picked by the people to whom they apply.
To the actual fair point he raises at the end about doing this piecemeal state-by-state, the answer is simply "why not?"
There is a reason the Federal constitution and government exists and that the US is not a confederacy, where each State is sovereign and broad changes would have to be done one-by-one. Will is mocking Feingold as merely being lazy, but who in their right mind, faced with doing 1 thing once to solve a problem or 50 things to solve the same problem would rather choose the latter? What is the supposed advantage of Will's route? Other than the likely failure of going that route, I can't see one.
Far from "imposing Wisconsin's preference" on the other states, at a minimum Senators from 34 States will have to approve this thing just to send it out to the States, where 38 of them will have to agree. It's all Feingold's fault if it happens. Just like those 1913 Progressives were able to "force" the 17th on the unwilling nation in the most democratic manner imaginable.
And now Will's coup de honte (shame):
By restricting the financing of political advocacy, the McCain-Feingold speech-rationing law empowers the government to regulate the quantity, timing and content of political speech. Thanks to Feingold, McCain and others, the First Amendment now, in effect, reads: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech unless it really, really wants to in order to guarantee that there will be only as much speech about the government as the government considers appropriate, and at times the government approves."
Now Feingold proposes to traduce federalism and nudge the Senate still further away from the nature and function the Framers favored. He is, as the saying goes, an unapologetic progressive, but one with more and more for which to apologize.
He just can't help himself. Feingold made it more difficult for wealthy people to drown out debate with bottomless propaganda budgets. What does that have to do with electing Senators? Who knows, but it really bugs George Will so he brings it up twice. Thanks to Fred Hiatt, for continuing to publish this creative and vital voice with his well crafted arguments and airtight reasoning skills. |
