I noticed something interesting during the Trump era. As the nation completely lost its mind, I saw incidents here and there of Republican senators seeming to keep their heads a little better than House Republicans.
For example, after Trump’s lies about voter fraud led to the January 6 riot, 14% of Republican senators (seven individuals) voted to convict him, whereas in the House only 5% of Republicans voted to impeach (ten individuals). Or look at who still voted against Arizona and Pennsylvania’s 2020 election results two months after election day, after (Republican) states had recounted and certified their results and Trump’s own administration officials and the federal courts had rejected the myth of voter fraud. 66% of House Republicans (139 politicians) voted to object to the validity of these states’ elections, with no actual evidence for their position. Only 6% of GOP senators (eight officials) did the same. And sure, the Senate has its Josh Hawleys, Lindsey Grahams, and Ted Cruzes, but doesn’t it usually feel like the most insane people are in the House? Like Majorie Taylor Greene (QAnon, space lasers owned by Jews causing wildfires, 9/11 was an inside job) or George Santos (pathologically lying about his career, relatives experiencing the Holocaust or 9/11, and founding an animal charity)? Why does the Senate at times seem like a slightly more sober place? Perhaps it’s nothing, but such things reminded me a bit of what the Constitutional framers wrote about the Senate and House.
For the Founding Fathers, the Senate, which would not be elected by voters but by state legislatures (this was true until 1913), would be comprised of more serious, intelligent people. A nation must, James Madison wrote in 1787, “protect the people agst. the transient impressions into which they themselves might be led.” The foolishness of the citizenry had to be tempered. Because the House of Representatives would be elected by the people, it would also be infected: the voters, “as well as a numerous body of Representatives, were liable to err also, from fickleness and passion.” Thus, “a necessary fence agst. this danger would be to select a portion of enlightened citizens, whose limited number, and firmness might seasonably interpose agst. impetuous counsels.” This was the Senate, the upper chamber, following closely the House of Lords in Britain that operated beside the House of Commons, the lower chamber.
Madison positioned the Senate as a check on the “temporary errors” of the masses-representing House, whereas the masses-representing House would be a guard against the abuses of the Senate, small and unelected by the citizenry. (He then went on to stress that one had to keep power away from the people, whose sheer numbers would threaten the interests of the rich. So the president, senators, justices, and so on would not be elected by ordinary voters — and only men with property could vote for House reps. See How the Founding Fathers Protected Their Own Wealth and Power.)
“The main design of the convention, in forming the senate,” the New York publisher Francis Childs wrote in 1788, “was to prevent fluctuations and cabals: With this view, they made that body small, and to exist for a considerable period.” Indeed, “There are few positions more demonstrable than that there should be in every republic, some permanent body to correct the prejudices, check the intemperate passions, and regulate the fluctuations of a popular assembly.” Childs was railing against the idea of senators not serving for life.
Alexander Hamilton’s plan was for life-term senators. “Gentlemen differ in their opinions concerning the necessary checks, from the different estimates they form of the human passions. They suppose seven years a sufficient period to give the Senate an adequate firmness, from not duly considering the amazing violence and turbulence of the democratic spirit.” Senators would “hold their places for life,” to achieve “stability.”
The story of George Washington calling the Senate the cooling saucer for the hot coffee of House legislation is probably untrue, but captures the general mindset of the framers.
Of course, the idea of senators being significantly more “enlightened” and level-headed than House reps from 1789 to 1913 deserves skepticism, but it would take lengthy historical study to form a coherent position. The modern observations that opened this writing can’t really support the opinions of the Founders, for modern senators are elected by the voters, not state legislatures. The 17th Amendment gave us different rules for the game. What this means is I can only ponder whether the framers were accidentally right: perhaps they theorized that senators would be more serious people on average, but this only became so after 1913. It is true that they could simply have been right, with this phenomenon defining the Senate no matter how senators were elected, but this cannot be answered without careful analysis of the political realm from the early republic era to World War I. Not that my musings can at present be fully answered either, as they are merely based on a few random observations, not careful, systematic analysis of modern behavioral differences between senators and representatives. All this is highly speculative.
However, it seems obvious it would be a little easier for crazy people to enter the House than the Senate. You simply don’t have to convince as many voters to support you. In 2022, there were 98 House districts (out of 435) where turnout was less than 200,000 people. The lowest districts had 90,000 to 140,000 total voters. If you’re a dunce who can get 50,000, 75,000, or 100,000 people to vote for you, you can make it to Congress. Districts are small, less diverse, sometimes gerrymandered. More people within them think and vote the same way — the average margin of victory among U.S. House races is 29%, versus 18-19% for Senate races — meaning it’s a bit easier to beat your rival candidate from the other party, if you live in the right district. If you’re running in a safe district — a blue candidate in an extremely blue area or a red one in an extremely red area — all you must truly worry about is beating your primary challengers from your own party, meaning you can secure a seat in Congress with even fewer votes.
Candidates for Senate, while naturally still courting voters on their side of the political spectrum as well as moderates, seek supporters across entire states, in wilderness and small towns and suburbs and big cities. Potential voters are more diverse geographically, racially, economically, ideologically (the poor rightwing farmer is not precisely the same as the rich rightwing business tycoon). To make it to the Senate, you’ll need more votes. 100,000 supporters might be enough in sparsely populated states like Alaska, Vermont, Wyoming, or the Dakotas. But beyond that you’ll need hundreds of thousands or millions of voters to beat the candidate from the other party. This is true regardless of the fact that you could win a primary with a relatively low number of supporters and would have a much better chance of winning a safe state.
Entering the House also requires far less money. Which may be a benefit to crazy people who lose funders when they do and say crazy things. (Admittedly, you may see the opposite effect these days.) It also opens the door to more self-funded candidates. Overall, it’s five to seven times more expensive to win a Senate race than a House race.
All this is to say it may be more difficult for the worst clowns to enter the Senate. There are more opportunities with the House; you need fewer voters and less cash. This may sound ludicrous in a world where Donald Trump could dominate the Republican primaries, indeed it is frightening when extremists like Trump or Greene beat normal conservatives, but more voters may nevertheless function — imperfectly — as a bulwark against irrationality, a check on dangerous candidates. (Recall that Trump lost one popular vote by 3 million and the next by 7 million, once the decision was placed before even more voters.) Someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene can garner 170,000 votes, and George Santos 145,000, but it may be more difficult for them to be taken seriously by their entire states, by the millions necessary to beat rival candidates. It’s not impossible, as Trump has shown, and enthusiasm among the rightwing masses for lunacy (authoritarianism, conspiracy theories, demagoguery) is only encouraging lunatics to run and helping them win, but “more voters, fewer clowns” may nevertheless be a general principle of democracy that held true before the Trump era and may yet hold true today. (Enough popular extremism, of course, will dismantle this principle entirely.)
If the Senate is in fact a more serious place, it’s possibly a product of the system established in 1913. You have those factors making it difficult for loons to get there. Consider the setup before this. A propertied resident of, say, Virginia would vote for state legislators to go to Richmond to represent his local district. The legislators in Richmond would then elect two senators to serve in Congress. (Meanwhile, House reps were elected as they are today; that Virginia resident would vote for one directly.) Now, perhaps state legislators somewhat paralleled the sobering function of voters today, in that they came from all over a state. Between this and being elected officials themselves, perhaps legislators really did ensure more serious people were generally sent to the Senate compared to the House. The Founders could have understood this; perhaps it played into their visions of enlightened politicians. (Perhaps the vision itself, the mere idea of a more serious Senate, partly made and makes it so, changing behavior, a self-fulfilling prophecy.) But maybe there was no difference whatsoever — if state legislators were elected by the stupid herd, why would they be serious, enlightened enough people to send serious, enlightened people to the Senate? And is convincing a few score legislators — fewer people — of your suitability actually easier than convincing thousands of voters? Creating just as big a door for nincompoops? We saw earlier how fewer voters might be beneficial to such candidates. An answer is elusive, but if the Founders were wrong in the beginning, perhaps they were made right with the reforms of the early twentieth century.
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