George Will takes on one of his favorite whipping boys, Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisc) here.  Feingold, along with his partner in crime, Sen. John McCain, is not satisfied with eviscerating the 1st Amendment; he now wants to make the 17th amendment even worse. His proposed Constitutional amendment will require all states to hold elections to replace US Senators.  Now, under the Constitution, states can have the Governor appoint or hold elections.

Will makes the case for abolishing the 17th Amendment:

The Wisconsin Democrat, who is steeped in his state’s progressive
tradition, says, as would-be amenders of the Constitution often do,
that he is reluctant to tamper with the document, but tamper he must
because the threat to the public weal is immense: Some governors have
recently behaved badly in appointing people to fill U.S. Senate
vacancies. Feingold’s solution, of which John McCain is a co-sponsor,
is to amend the 17th Amendment. It would be better to repeal it.

The Framers established election of senators by state
legislators, under which system the nation got the Great Triumvirate
(Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and John Calhoun) and thrived. In 1913,
progressives, believing that more, and more direct, democracy is always
wonderful, got the 17th Amendment ratified. It stipulates popular
election of senators, under which system Wisconsin has elected, among
others, Joe McCarthy, as well as Feingold.


Severing senators from state legislatures, which could monitor and
even instruct them, made them more susceptible to influence by
nationally organized interest groups based in Washington. Many of those
groups, who preferred one-stop shopping in Washington to currying
favors in all the state capitals, campaigned for the 17th Amendment. So
did urban political machines, which were then organizing an uninformed
electorate swollen by immigrants. Alliances between such interests and
senators led to a lengthening of the senators’ tenures.

The Framers gave the three political components of the
federal government (the House, Senate and presidency) different
electors (the people, the state legislatures and the Electoral College
as originally intended) to reinforce the principle of separation of
powers, by which government is checked and balanced.