He is trying to help get the discussion going.
I know I’m a little late to comment about this but since I have taken up this issue as part of my presidential campaign, and because I live in Indiana I thought my comments might help. First, the snide comments about why anyone would want to rescind this amendment just shows that it is those people, not Senator Smith that don’t know history.
The 17th amend was ratified by...well, Senators. Why would they want to change the way our Founders’ set up our government? What was happening is that since Senators were elected by State legislatures, those same legislatures also had the power to recall a Senator if the legislature believed the Senator wasn’t voting in the State’s best interests. These recalls were not only annoying to Senators “power”, but sometimes a state would go for a time without a Senator while the legislature voted on who to send next. So, as Senator Smith correctly outlines, the 17th amend broke our government.
Originally, the government was set up much like the U.K. parliament, but with a president instead of a prime minister; a president that did not require a coalition to govern. The vice president didn’t even need to be of the same party/ticket. See Lincoln/Johnson. The Senate and Congress would act much like the House of “Lords” and the House of “Commons”. That is, the Senate was designed to represent the interests of the States — not the people of the state, but the government of each state. Whereas the Congress is to represent the people directly. Again, the 17th amend broke this balance. You now have two houses that are basically redundant. Why do we need a Senate and a Congress? What are they balancing? They often simply balance the parties and act as a party vs party mechanism. Our government wasn’t even designed to be party driven.
Further, there is no longer any state government representation. Senators often promise the people this or that and then once elected, the politicians do their own thing. Before, at least the state government could recall them. Now the federal government can and does impose things upon a state and the state has little to no recourse, no representation.
The 17th amend has nothing to do with fixing “corruption” or wealthy white slave-owning aristocrats (that guy is watching too much Annie or Shirley Temple movies). The 17th amend was passed by Senators so they could be free of threat of recall. It was a coup. It really has broken our governmental system. I guess the Senators feel it is easier to dupe the people to elect and reelect and reelect them over and over instead of having to deal with their state possibly recalling them for being an idiot. — check out rodericke.com