Ben Sasse has a point
The Senate has its problems, but what if the answers are harder to find than crafting a clever policy solution? What if it demands something from us, the electorate?
In September, US Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) penned a opinion piece to explain how the Senate isn’t working properly and made eight recommendations to fix it.
The premise of his reform agenda is that the Senate is dysfunctional, unable to meaningfully perform its legislative duties; that senators spend most of their time trying to create soundbites to ride the cable news airwaves rather than legislating in a manner that culminates in actual votes and better laws. All the while our national debt continues to reach new heights and unanswered questions remain on a multitude of critical policies. The result is that the slack in congressional lawmaking is gladly picked up by the other branches of government.
(Un)representative democracy
It’s true that Congress has abdicated much of its authority to the Executive and Judicial Branches over the years. This is problematic, because Congress is designed to write the laws we are subjected to precisely because it is the most representative branch of government. Our representation at the federal level is substantively diluted if the people we send to Washington let others do the work for them. It’s no wonder so much of our modern political angst is directed towards whoever resides in the White House and sits on the Supreme Court as if they were responsible for lawmaking.
A nation’s laws embody its deepest values, so it would seem obvious that citizens should have a strong hand in defining them. But as Congress allows other branches the liberty to determine major policy issues, topics like health care, immigration, abortion, etc are increasingly kicked to the Executive Branch, which has been given a long a leash to “execute” the laws passed. Whatever it can’t settle gets tossed to the courts to decide, leaving major policy decisions to nine unelected individuals.
This distorted version of a representative democracy is hardly what our founders intended. As Yuval Levin wisely wrote, “The first branch [Congress] is first for a reason, and when it fails to do its essential work, nothing else works either.”
So in this respect, the premise of Sasse’s piece holds. It then raises the question: how then can we fix it?
17th Amendment
Among Sasse’s proposals are: removing cameras from committee meetings, making standing committees temporary, making floor debate more robust, have members live with each other, making two-year budgets, banning authorizations of funding without also appropriating it, keeping the filibuster intact (very important) and establishing term limits (Sasse is wrong on this one).
Most of these would be welcomed improvements but only amount to window dressing if considered the final solution. They simply miss the bigger problem.
But Sasse does make one interesting proposal – to repeal the 17th Amendment, which allows for the direct election of senators by the citizens of each state. Prior to 1913, state legislators elected senators under the assumption that the Senate’s nature demanded higher-minded people to choose who comprise it.
To be clear, eliminating the amendment is not the solution, but Sasse is onto something deeply profound in this recommendation. That is, he’s correctly isolated the deeper issue at play: our current senators are not actually the high-minded, wiser statesmen the founders envisioned guiding the country. That’s why changing some of the Senate rules will never be enough. For real change, the Senate needs a different kind of senator.
The answer is not to repeal the 17th Amendment for two reasons. First, to assume state legislators embody the sort of high-minded discernment needed to select senators is misguided at best. Second, and more importantly, restricting the freedom of Americans to choose who represents them is a step in the wrong direction. Freedom and transparency in government have rightfully grown with each generation. Even if it sometimes brings along its own unique problems, it is – on balance – healthy and serves the long-term interests of a representative government to promote greater engagement among citizens.
So how can we improve upon the people we send to Washington?
Unfortunately, there’s no quick solution or obvious legal ‘fix’. There’s no clever policy that would fix everything if we could only get enough votes to pass it. Rather, the answer is deeply personal and has implications for every voter in America.
If we want better results in the Senate, we need better senators. If we want better senators, we need better voters. That is, voters unencumbered by our worst qualities and empowered by our best qualities to exhibit the requisite discernment in selecting better senators.
Demanding more from our senators means first demanding more from ourselves. So we must challenge the spirit of our own approach to politics, such that it leads to nominating and electing better leaders.
What the Senate needs from us
We must pause and reflect on the sorts of behaviors we are reinforcing as constituents.
All of the biggest changes we want can only be solved by purposefully appealing to our highest sense of self, which culminates in one key feature of our character: intellectual honesty. This is the prism through which we consume information, make decisions and develop our outward views. It is the foundation, the gateway tool for wisdom and discernment. If it is clogged by untruths or half-truths that we cling to for ease or belonging, we must do the hard work of cleaning house.
This is no easy task: It means we can no longer be made to believe the worst fringes of a political party define its majority. It means refusing to be convinced by sensational opposition advertisements that define the opponents as ‘the enemy’ or ‘dangerous’ or that encourage us to elect “fighters” who promise not to compromise. It means casting aside the petty digs that cable news feeds us rather than basking in their harshness.
We know the other party is not really the enemy or dangerous. We know they don’t hate America or want to destroy it. Most simply have a different view on how to achieve the same policy outcomes that we want. Some have been burned along the way, of course, and need an extra dose of graciousness sent their way.
A greater personal focus on restoring our intellectual honesty will relieve our instinctual desire to exhibit underhanded fits of anger, pride and cynicism to which our political pop culture has made us accustomed. The cutting tweets, the sarcastic Facebook comments. the reveling in our favorite cable news anchor’s portrait of the other side’s failures. These instincts to fight should be re-directed towards electing senators who will apply the same vigor to solving our common policy problems of poverty, health care, education and national debt rather than wasting it on words used against our neighbors.
Are not senators just doing the bidding of their constituents? Most every word and action is done to please their base. For those of us considered part of a “base,” it’s up to us to steer the rudder accordingly.
My discernment vs your discernment
I understand that the result of intellectual honesty will mean different things to different people. That’s okay, there will always be views across the political spectrum. In fact, it’s less about our views on policies and more about the posture of our hearts.
The process of ensuring our internal compasses our calibrated and committed to intellectual honesty won’t cause us all to suddenly agree. But it will move us away from extremes and towards the middle ground. Here there is opportunity for compromise, which is how legislation gets passed in the Senate.
The long and steady demonstration and consistent reinforcement of our words and actions draped in intellectual honesty will, over time, wash over those with open hearts and point them towards their better selves. All the while, our beliefs about which candidates are worthy of being elected to the Senate will begin to resemble what the founders intended.
So let’s do the hard work of self-examination to ensure we’re in the best place mentally and emotionally to support candidates who demonstrate competency, empathy and vision for our nation. These are the qualities in the caliber of leader for which the Senate was designed, regardless of whether we agree with them on all the issues.
What we need in senators
We need senators from a diverse range of personal, professional and educational backgrounds to properly shape our legal system and who gallantly cast a vision for a better America rather than cowering to the pressures of the office.
More specifically we need senators who go to Washington with the understanding that James Madison intended for Congress: to be a safe haven for bipartisan work. Individuals who put their foot down on every issue, declaring their way or the highway, are better left to the House of Representatives, if anywhere. There is a time and place for principled stands. But it is not every time.
In today’s politics, compromise may be the boldest action a senator can take. But they should take it courageously and leave it to voters to decide whether they’re right or not. One thing is certain: high-minded leaders are receptive to rational legislative compromises even if the other sides gets some of what they want.
Conclusion
I commend Senator Sasse for leading courageously with bold ideas. Though he missed the mark in his recommendations, he’s tapped into an important problem – we lack good senators. Unfortunately, the solution is not as easy as passing a law that will fix it.
As a conservative republican, I believe we should stop relying on the government to fix Congress. The problems Sasse describes are inherently ‘people problems’, which are ultimately traced back to us, the voters. So our collective focus should be to look in the mirror and draw from the unique and extraordinary individuals who share a common commitment to our natural inalienable rights and take back the reigns of Congress in order to remove power from the hands of the few.
This is a slow process but begins with each one of us retreating to the depths of our selves to clear out the pride and anger that keep us from being intellectually honest in our consumption and delivery of all things political. Only then can true wisdom and discernment be released to choose candidates who will embody the high-minded statesmen our founders intended for the Upper Chamber.