Ever since winning control of the House and Senate in 2006, and then adding the White House in 2008, some Democrats have become increasingly unhappy with the longtime traditions and, in some cases, the constitutional structure, of the legislative branch. First they denounced the filibuster. Why should the minority party in the Senate be allowed to gum things up and require more than a simple majority to pass a bill? Some Democrats who thought the filibuster was an invaluable tool of democracy when their party was in the minority would now like to get rid of the practice altogether.
Then they became unhappy with the old-bull system. Why should the oldest, most senior lawmakers run things? Why should Rep. John Dingell, who might not have suitably progressive ideas about the environment and health care, be given a key role in passing the Obama agenda? Better replace him with Rep. Henry Waxman, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi managed to do on the Energy and Commerce Committee earlier this year.
Of course, neither the filibuster nor the old-bull system is in the Constitution. But now, we’re hearing complaints about the very structure of our democracy, one laid out in Article I of the Constitution. Why do senators from dinky little states like Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Maine — why do those senators get to thwart the desires of lawmakers from more important places like California, New York, and New Jersey? How could a man like Sen. Max Baucus wield the power that should be held by Sen. Barbara Boxer?
In the Washington Post Outlook section today, a news reporter named Alec MacGillis writes that since Barack Obama entered the White House, “senators from the wide-open spaces have asserted themselves against him over and over” and wonders whether such results are “really what the founders had in mind.” Recounting the legendary exchange between Thomas Jefferson and George Washington in which Washington said that the Senate would be a check on the passions of the House, much as a saucer cools hot coffee, MacGillis writes: “A nice tale. But what if the coffee gets so cold that no one bothers to drink it? Or if the Senate takes its coffee black in a country that opted overwhelmingly for sugar and cream?”
MacGillis ran his concerns by Sen. Kent Conrad, one of those small-state, wide-open spaces lawmakers who are insufficiently enthusiastic about the president’s agenda. Conrad explained the deal at the constitutional convention by which the legislative branch’s structure was shaped, and then asked, “Are you proposing changing the Constitution?”
“Well, maybe,” MacGillis responds.
Like those progressives who dislike other parts of the legislative process, MacGillis seems not to appreciate the idea that the parts of the system work together to create a democratic and representative whole. Sure there are imbalances. For example, you could argue that the three most important people advancing Obama’s agenda in the House are from San Francisco (Pelosi); Hollywood (Waxman); and Massachusetts (Rep. Barney Frank). Are they representative of the country as a whole? The short answer is no. They’re not required to be. But if you put their leadership together with other balances within the House, and then against the different structure of the Senate, you’ve got a system that is both responsive to the expression of the voters’ will last November and respectful of minorities as well. So as far as changing the Constitution is concerned — well, maybe not.
