Want To Fix Congress? Add 5,500 New Representatives

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The Federalist : Want To Fix Congress? Add 5,500 New Representatives

The current problems in American governance may not stem from too much populism, but too little.

By Lyman Stone MARCH 14, 2016

With the rise of increasingly extreme political figures like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, there’s been no shortage of debate over What Went Wrong With America. Is the republic failing? Is the constitution irreparably flawed? How will we survive the big-bad-no-good-very-mean scourge of populism? The truth is, the current problems in American governance may not stem from too much populism. They may stem from too little.

 

We often forget how personal politics were in the early days of the republic. Senators were elected by state legislators, which means, essentially, a club of a few dozen or hundred local notables got together, and picked somebody to go and represent the state legislature’s interests in Congress. Senators weren’t representing millions of people in their states as they do today, nor even thousands: they were representing, at most, a few hundred.