I had an idea, and I wanted your guys' input on it: what about "Democracy by Accretion" ? What I mean is, all democratically appointed positions like the Senate, House of Representatives, or the Presidency are permanent positions, held for life or until the position is willingly vacated, but the catch is that elections still happen at the appointed times, and the newly elected people are just 'added' to the existing incumbency; and everyone in that incumbency therefore has to share all the powers with all the other members, with no privilege given to seniority.
So over the course of say, two decades, the Senate and House of representative would bloat to thousands of members and the President's office would have 6 people in it, and growing.
I'm thinking that it'd get big moneyed interests out, as politicians would no longer need to rely on them for campaign funding for re-election. People in permanent positions could finally have breathing room to implement long plans that they can actually follow through on and see to the end. Conversely, they would not have total control, the voting population can't replace them, but they can add people of differing temperaments and ideologies to counteract them, or to supplement them if they like them. The massive bloat of people in held positions would mean that no one person would have that much power, and getting smaller over time, making the corruption of the offices very unlikely. This would also force all officials to be very cooperative, and to work together to get anything done, resulting in legislation that serves the greatest number; which is appropriate for a very large nation like the United States.
The attitude of elections would be very different as well, knowing that whomever is voted in is going to be sticking around and can't be removed easily. There would be still impeachment procedures, though impeachment would probably be a much easier and less dramatic affair, considering how many officials there are, removing one or two wouldn't be seen as a big deal if they're demonstrably bad. The threat of assassination of an elected official is also notably decreased, because if you have 10 Presidents, and 10 Vice Presidents, with more on the way, it won't rock the nation if one of them gets gunned down by a crazed assassin.
Additionally, you could think of each election representing that specific time, the specific zeitgeist of the people, with the elected representative being the output of that zeitgeist; so the elected officials of 12 years ago are still representing the zeitgeist of that era, while the latest one is representing that latest zeitgeist.
Though of course, this might mean that eventually the various Houses will need to be renovated to become larger, much larger, probably bigger than a football stadium, in order to accommodate all these elected officials. That might just make C-SPAN more entertaining to watch however, with snack vendors yelling over whomever is giving a speech, and the midday's proceedings being paused for a scheduled halftime show.
Long-ish rant on congressional apportionment a the 17th amendment to follow.
It's not the same idea, but has a lot of the same effects, but there is strong argument in the original intent of the constitution (if not the exact wording), that we should have many more representatives than we do. Senate is a little more troublesome, as the constitution is pretty clearly 2 per state, and short of chopping up states or amending the constitution, that's not going to change. But Senators were also originally usually appointed by the state government rather than by a popular vote, until 1912. Going back to that system (Which again, would require a constitutional amendment to repeal/change the 17th.) and increasing the number of representatives from 435 to some much larger number, would:
A: Make senators not have to worry so much about re-election per your suggestions.
B: Dilute the power of the House, making it more difficult for moneyed lobbying efforts focused on any specific representative or specific set of representative to have an effect.
It would also help the representatives have more of a direct connection to their constituents. Near the beginning of the history of this country, we had approximately 40,000 people per representative. As of last census it was over 700,000, with some districts being over a million. My personal preference would be to at LEAST double the size of the house, but preferably make it MUCH larger(I'd like to see each district have less than 100,000 people in it) but previous attempts to do this have only added, at most, about 100 new representatives to the current total of 435, which in my opinion wouldn't make a huge difference.
Personally, I think the most likely, and most effective change would be to change the Senate appointment rules back to having the state governments control that process. As it stands, the Senate doesn't really do much different than the House, and the only significant difference is the filibuster rule. If the senators didn't have to worry so much about direct public pressure they could be the moderating branch of the legislature they were meant to be. They could have open debates about the actual substance and effects of laws rather than every spoken word being a party line propaganda piece. They could make the mildly unpopular decisions and wouldn't be as beholden to the party line votes as they are now. As it is, Congress is either deadlocked, unable to do anything except (usually) keep the lights on in the country, or one party has complete control, at which point the only moderating force becomes the Supreme Court, which has limited power in that function.
The intended route is supposed to be:
1. House passes a bunch of stupid, extreme, and occasionally well thought out and reasonable laws, because there's limited tools for discussion and limited ability for individuals to make significant change.
2. Laws go before the senate where they get debated and the worst ones get weeded out, and the reasonable ones get a second set of eyes to make sure it's really as good as it sounds, changes get made.
3. Goes back to house in better form, presumably to pass with minor changes if it passed the first time.
4. Good reasonable law goes to president to get signed most of the time.
(Obviously that's ideal and it's rarely that simple and things CAN start in the Senate instead. But that's a simplified ideal process.)
As it stands we get this:
1. House sometimes passes a bunch of stupid, extreme and occasionally well thought out laws.
2. Senate sometimes rubberstamps those laws based upon whether they're from the correct party or not with little debate or change.
3. If it goes back to the house again with changes, those changes probably are intended to kill it.
4. President signs or vetos law based upon which party they are compared to who originally proposed the law.
(Obviously that's a bit extreme and mostly only applies to the last 3.5 years, but it's been a trend, getting worse, for decades now.)
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