Restore confidence and trust

John Dingell is now retired from serving as a Democratic Representative from Michigan for 59 years. Before he retired he was the Dean of the House for 20 years. The Dean is the longest serving member. Those 59 years means Dingell holds the record for tenure in Congress and also holds the record for longest time as Dean. The current Dean – Don Young from Alaska – is still 13 years behind Dingell.

In an article for The Atlantic Dingell noted in 1958 73% of Americans trusted the federal government. As of a year ago (the last time it was measured) only 18% of Americans trust the government.

There are many reasons for this dramatic decline: the Vietnam War, Watergate, Ronald Reagan’s folksy but popular message that government was *not* here to help, the Iraq War, and worst of all by far, the Trumpist mind-set

So Dingell offers suggestions on how to restore confidence and trust in government and in our democracy.

* Full participation in elections – at age 18 you’re automatically registered and there are no impediments to voting.

* Eliminate money in campaigns.

Public service should not be a commodity, and elected officials should not have to rent themselves out to the highest bidder in order to get into (or stay in) office. If you want to restore trust in government, remove the price tag. I am fully aware that the Supreme Court has declared that “money is speech.” That’s nonsense. The day my wallet starts talking to me, I might reconsider that view.

* Protect an independent press.

And the suggestion that got the most attention:

* Abolish the Senate. Dingell notes that

California has almost 40 million people, while the 20 smallest states have a *combined* population totaling less than that. Yet because of an 18th-century political deal, those 20 states have 40 senators, while California has just two. These sparsely populated, usually conservative states can block legislation supported by a majority of the American people. That’s just plain crazy.

Some of those states have fewer people than a congressional district in Michigan.

I checked 2017 census estimates. California has more people than the bottom 21 states. California plus Texas has more people than the bottom 27 states, and the top four – Cal., Texas, Florida, and New York, have more people than the bottom 33 states. In the Senate the larger of those population blocks gets 8 senators and a smaller block gets 66 senators.

Along with the Senate Dingell would also abolish the Electoral College because it has the same flaws.

Yeah, the people in those small states would block any effort to give up their outsize power. So one way around that it to combine the House and Senate into one. Even to make that happen would take a national movement lasting about a generation.

I add that another option is to break Senate district boundaries away from state boundaries. One example of how that might look is here.