The Founders Intended What Now?
By Ezra, channeling Alec MacGillis:
So too is the section where he quotes Donald Ritchie, the Senate’s official historian, explaining that “the authors of the Constitution really thought the House would be the driving engine, and the Senate would just be the senior group that would perfect legislation that came up from the House.” Given how often the Senate’s current role is defended on grounds of original intent, it’s crucial to understand that the Founders actually meant for the more representative body to be the more powerful of the two chambers.
I see arguments of this sort every now and again, and I don’t really understand them. A really common one comes in the form “the Founders didn’t want a standing military.” This latter one is wrong on the merits (some of the Founders didn’t want a standing military, while others were pretty happy with the idea), but more broadly it depends on the idea that the Founders were kind of stupid. If they didn’t want a standing military, then they should have been clear in the Constitution that they didn’t want a standing military. Really, the idea that tension with Britain, France, Native American tribes, and Spain might produce strong incentives for a standing military was too complicated for the Founders to think out? It would never have occurred to them? Similarly, the above argument doesn’t make a lot of bloody sense to me. I suppose it’s possible that the Founders may have intended the House of Representatives to be more powerful than the Senate. If they did, it would have been nice for them to so indicate in the Constitution, and to do so a lot more clearly than they did. From the perspective of a Martian (which, in this case, isn’t all that different from the perspective of a 21st century American) it’s really not at all clear that the House should have a stronger legislative role than the Senate. It has certain powers that the Senate lacks, but then the Senate has certain powers that the House lacks.
And so, I’m left to draw the conclusion that either a) the Founders couldn’t anticipate that their vague, uninstitutionalized desires regarding the structure of the legislative branch would quickly fall by the wayside, or b) that the Founders didn’t intend such, or at least didn’t intend such as a group. I’m leaning towards the latter.