The Senate is not a democratic institution, nor was it set up to be. If I remember correctly from The Federalist Papers or Henry Steele Commager or High School Civics or something, the Senate was set-up to balance the passions of the people’s House.

The Founding Fathers were elites. They wanted a democracy, but their idea of democracy – while perhaps enlightened for a time of monarchs – would not be considered democracy today. In most States, only white property owners had the vote and even that select pool was considered too volatile not to have a check on their power. That check was the Senate which, originally represented the States. States as in separate Governments. When James Madison wrote about equal suffrage in the Senate, he was writing about equality between States, not people.

As representatives of the States, the Senators were presumed to be elites and, as such, they treated each other cordially (my guess is that it was an even bigger shock, in 1856, when Representative Preston Brooks – very un-cordially – beat Senator Charles Sumner with a cane). If a Senator had something to say, he was allowed to say it. That evolved into the filibuster and that distorted into the super-majority.

When James Madison wrote about equal suffrage in the Senate, he was writing against it. Not against it in practice but against it as being anything but an exceptional solution to the problem at hand (very similar to the Supreme Court’s 2000 decision to give the election to Bush when Scalia said Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances only). Madison and others agreed to  equality between states – as an exceptional compromise – in the Senate because they were afraid that states that didn’t join the Union might form other Unions, possibly with European powers. Just as the 3/5ths clause was put in the Constitution as a sop to slave states, the formation of the Senate with two Senators from each state no matter their size or population was a sop to the small states.

But, in 1800, the states were pretty close together in population compared to today. Rhode Island had a population of 69,122, more than 1/9th that of Pennsylvania with 602,545 souls. Today Rhode Island has a population of 1,052,567 people compared to California with a population 37,253,956. Both have two Senators and both States have equal political power in the Senate.

Because rural states which, by definition have smaller populations, are more conservative, the conservatives carry much more political power per capita. I haven’t done the numbers, but James Surowiecki of the New Yorker has and he says assuming that each senator represents all of the people in his or her state and that the currently open Senate seats (like Delaware, Illinois, and New York) will be filled by someone from the same party. And what you find, if you do the math, is that Republican senators actually represent about thirty-seven per cent of Americans.

Before the filibuster change, 45 Senators, representing 37% of the population could hold up any legislation they wanted. This is not Democracy. This is not Government of the people, by the people, for the people, even if we pretend it is. This is a Government setup by our Founding Fathers, a group of Elitist with, at least, some fear of the hoi polloi – the Great Unwashed as my mother called them – and they setup a government of elites that would be hard to change.

Several months ago, Ed Cooney said that the shooting of President Kennedy changed the United States. That it was the day we lost our innocence. I told him that I thought he was wrong, but I was wrong. Everybody who was old enough to be there, remembers where they were when they first heard that the President was killed. That shocking moment – the moment they heard about that beautiful man being shot – is indelibly burned into our collective mind.

I was 23 on November 22, 1963 and stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas. Without a TV. What, looking back on it now, seems almost instantly, we were told we might be shipped to Cuba to provide air defense for the 101st Airborne which might be sent to Cuba because Castro might have been behind the killing. We spent the next couple of days packing up our equipment and then waiting to be shipped out. When we stood down, I – the whole unit, really – was disappointed and the funeral was over.

Watching Mad Men several years ago, I was struck by how much the country was glued to their televisions during the couple of weeks after the killing and how I missed most of it. How I missed little John John saluting his father’s Caisson as it passed by, I missed the widow, dressed so fashionably, in black. I missed the grandeur of a state funeral.

I also missed the bonding driven by that common experience. I missed out on the transformation of President Kennedy to Martyr Kennedy and have been a little mystified ever since by the adoration.

It wasn’t the day that I lost my innocence, but I am ready to believe it was a day that transformed The United States.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863