On this day in 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified, providing for the direct election of Senators. The amendment went into effect for the following year’s election. I suppose there’s more to say on the subject — about early advocacy for the measure in the Jacksonian era, about the Populists, about Progressive reform, blah, blah, blah — but the Seventeenth Amendment is hardly my favorite. I mean, it’s not bad or anything. But it’s no First, Thirteenth, Fourteenth, or Nineteenth. Sorry Seventeenth Amendment, you’ll have to do better next time.
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8 comments
May 10, 2008 at 5:20 am
PorJ
Dude, the 17th is all about what happens when American journalism does its job… “The Treason of the Senate” (published in Hearst’s Cosmopolitan magazine in 1906) by David Graham Phillips got the ball rolling. Never in American history had the malfeasance & corruption of the political machines been given such a prominent public airing (including Watergate/Pentagon Papers, etc.). After Phillips’ article, and several follow-ups, public indignation led to this Constitutional Amendment. When you consider how difficult it is to pass an Amendment to the Constitution, you could make an argument that “Treason of the Senate” is the most important piece of journalism in American history – even more important than “The Jungle,” which, after all, just ushered in a regulatory regime that was relatively easy to game (and actually favored larger interests).
May 10, 2008 at 7:38 am
Michael
It’s just too bad that the President’s election wasn’t included with that of the Senators. I guess that those scandals just didn’t seem close enough to home.
May 10, 2008 at 9:46 am
Gene O'Grady
Isn’t it true that at that time an amendment to do presidential elections by popular vote would never have been ratified because the Southern states relied on counting their disenfranchised black voters to build up their electoral votes but would have lost influence if they had only had the white votes counted overall in a presidential election?
I remember looking in an almanac once at the results in the election of 1948 (the year I was born) and being amazed at how low the vote totals in the south were vis-a-vis non-Southern states with fewer electoral votes.
May 11, 2008 at 10:42 am
Adam Arenson
Though the 17th Amendment has great counterfactual power (I know, here we go again). To name just two handy Midwestern examples:
–Thomas Hart Benton had enough votes for his partisans in the 1850 election, but lost in the Missouri Senate and could not return his unique brand of compromise to the Senate;
–and a certain tall Illinois lawyer led the Republican Party to victory in 1858, but the incumbent Illinois state senators held against the tide and re-elected Stephen A. Douglas (short, white) in place of Mr. Lincoln.
So the drama is there, if you reach for it…
P.S. Any thoughts on the … unusual YouTube video for the 17th? A shout-out for Mrs. Mika’s social-studies class, I guess.
May 11, 2008 at 12:20 pm
urbino
Q: Without the 17th, we would have:
a. more Joe Liebermans
b. fewer Joe Liebermans
c. about the same number of Joe Liebermans
May 11, 2008 at 12:43 pm
washerdreyer
About the same, many states followed the so-called Oregon Plan prior to the passage of the 17th which featured nominally non-biding popular Senatorial elections, which would then usually be ratified by the state legislature on pain of not being reelected if they went against the popular will.
May 11, 2008 at 1:02 pm
urbino
Sounds rather like the current super-delegate system.
May 12, 2008 at 8:37 am
The Commander Guy
Good point on Lincoln – Douglas debates.
I guess this would be the high point in the argument for appointment of Senators by the legislature. In such instances, local elections, Party Affiliation and party platform all that more important. And it helped to make the local parties more powerful and important than they are today.
It’s the Third Amendment that never gets any respect.