Where Have All The Statesmen Gone?
“The use of the Senate is to consist in its proceeding with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom, than the popular branch.” — James Madison, at the Constitutional Convention, June 7, 1787
It’s December 2017, and here we find ourselves: with a Senate passing an unread and partially hand-written tax legislation riddled with mistakes at 2:00am, and a President and the Republican Party openly campaigning for a known child predator Senatorial candidate. One must ask, how did we get here?
Specifically, how did the Senate become this? This very body was designed by James Madison to safeguard and sustain our system of government, to be a collection of elected officials who would occupy the position of a “special class of citizens standing sentinel over the country” like the Guardians of Plato’s Republic (Madison, Federalist 10). According to Madison, we had the opportunity — and the duty — as a nation to create a class of citizens who would lead with refinement, patriotism, a love of justice, wise discernment, and who wouldn’t “sacrifice those principles to temporary or partial consideration.” They would be our stewards of Republican Democracy.
In the 220 years since the ratification of our Constitution, I think we can all say we’ve made great strides to fulfill the preamble’s dictated end: to create a more perfect Union. Our Senate, which has had its ups and downs (lest we forget the caning of Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks in 1856…), has had its fill of men and women of that elevated class of citizen so described by Madison. Some of our nation’s greatest leaders have emerged from the Senate. Yet, today we find ourselves at an especially disheartening low point. The Senators whose duty it is to not “sacrifice” their principles or duty to special interest, have done just that. They admit publicly that if they don’t pass a tax cut for corporations and billionaires their “financial contributions will stop” (Lindsey Graham, R-SC), and to pay for it they lay the burden on those who truly need their help and propose cutting programs that provide that much needed assistance. They twiddle their thumbs while the President, the leader of the Republican Party, actively dismantles the power of his own office, American international influence, disseminates a dangerous level of misinformation and unsubstantiated claims of criminality against his former opponents, and even insults them to their faces. The Republican Party and Trump throw their full weight behind a man who is known for sexually assaulting young girls, and the Senate Republicans stand by and go along with it, turning on their original statements of disavowal — and sacrificing their long professed ‘moral high ground’ and “values” — as they prepare to embrace him (if elected) into their ranks just so they can have an extra vote on those tax cuts. They manipulate Senate procedure rules for their own hyper-partisan goals, and go as far as completely shutting down proceedings and refusing to do their jobs when they hold a grudge.
What would James Madison say if he were here to see this mutated monster of his intended creation? A central tenet of Madison’s approach to the formulation of our nation’s government, especially that of the Senate, was the filtering and mitigating of people’s passions. His focus on Plato’s image of human passions as the chariot horses, bolting onward and endangering anything in their path, dictated his approach to the Constitution and the crafting of a government best equipped to corral these passions and and result in a cool, reasonable, and fair system. Evidently, this system has hit a significant pitfall if a man who cannot even mitigate his passions for underage girls can make his way to the Senate. His discussion of the danger of factions, and the way Congress was designed to filter their influence out, takes center stage in his contributions to the Federalist Papers, and the use of the Senate specifically to counteract any such factions that arise in the House was highlighted in his statements made in defense of the Constitution at the 1787 convention. Still, here we find ourselves, with these intended “sentinels” reduced to a faction of hyper-partisan goons who sacrifice their purported values for campaign donations — forfeiting the ability to do their jobs in order to keep their jobs.
James Madison did warn us: it would be vain to think that “Enlightened Statesmen will always be at the helm.” He was indeed correct, thus the question remains: where have all the Statesmen gone, and will they ever come back? Perhaps our solution is to take his original directive to heart once again, and create them.
