Congressional approval in August is down to 10 percent, according to Gallup, here, tying the all-time low.
No wonder. How could one person effectively speak for an average constituency of over 700,000 Americans? Do you know your Congressman? Does he know you?
It wasn't meant to be this way.
The fiercest disagreements over the Constitution's ratification were over whether a Congressman would be able to speak for 30,000 Americans, or 15,000 as the anti-federalists wanted. The advocates of 30,000 won, but the line in the Constitution was inartfully written, looking backward to that debate more than forward to the consequence:
"The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand . . .."
And so census followed census, and the Congress grew in size as the population did, decade upon decade, following the principle of one per thirty thousand.
Americans today don't realize how the Congress of the United States offended against this arrangement not until the 1920s. It was a naked power grab, fixing the number of representatives at the then current 435.
The Constitution had said nothing, they eagerly pointed out in those days, about one for more than thirty thousand, only that, say, one for 15,000 was too many. The scientific inspectors of language didn't care about the intent and the custom, only about the new opportunity. Dispensing with the census, however, which was the basis for apportioning representation, was a bridge too far.
But the example had consequences. Not long after FDR in his admiration of foreign dictators overturned another custom laid down in the founding era by the father of the country, George Washington, by running for a third term. There was nothing to prevent it. If one branch of government could grasp for more power, so could another. The imperial designs of the presidency have been with us ever since.
The best way to fix the Congress isn't to elect a new one of a different political party. It's to dilute the power it has concentrated into its few hands by flooding the place with the roughly 10,267 representatives the constitution calls for. This should be done by constitutional amendment, after the same manner in which the 22nd explicitly enshrined Washington's example into law in 1951, restricting the president to two terms.
The Constitution isn't perfect. If it were it wouldn't be amendable. Strict constructionism is fine as far as it goes, until it runs up against the need for explicit construction.
We used to complain to the British that we had taxation without representation.
Now we have representation without representation.
It's time we changed that.
Backward, countrymen, to the future!
