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In
Defense of A
Strange Notion
Every
four years we hear the cry to abolish the electoral
college. It's worth remembering why Virginia's founding
fathers adopted it in the first place.
Every Virginian — indeed, every American — should take
the time to read the proceedings of the June, 1788, Virginia
convention on
the ratification of the Constitution of the United States. Without this background, it is
virtually impossible to have a full understanding of
perhaps our most vital political and constitutional
traditions.
The Virginia
convention,
which was held in Richmond, included among its delegates many of the most prominent leaders of the
day: James
Madison, Patrick Henry, James Monroe, George Mason,
Edmund Pendleton. Their
speeches remain remarkably fresh. Their insights were truly prescient.
The
Bill of Rights would surely never have been added to
the Constitution as the first ten amendments had
Henry, Mason and other delegates not forced
Madison to agree to
support that action. Opponents
of the proposed Constitution were concerned about
the loss of individual liberty and the erosion of
state sovereignty. They
believed that the prevention of those harms required
the addition of explicit language to the
Constitution.
Henry
worried that state governments would be no match for
a central government.
The autonomy of the states would be weakened
gradually but inevitably by the federal authority.
The ultimate result would be what Henry’s
faction called consolidation, which is an unhealthy
concentration of power at the national level.
The
opponents of the Constitution feared that mere
parchment barriers would not contain the federal
authority. The
states were no match, in their view, for the
national government to be established by the
proposal Madison
urged the delegates to ratify.
Madison
countered
that he valued individual freedom, but that the
separation of powers and other features of the
proposed Constitution provided sufficient
protection.
Both
sides shared the belief that a federal system was
necessary to preserve individual liberty. Their common objective was not only to
safeguard the parochial interests of Virginia, but also to
decentralize government so that individual rights
would not be threatened. To them, a consolidated government without
strong and sovereign states would be unwise and
unacceptable. The
two factions disagreed over how far to go in
guaranteeing state autonomy. Despite prevailing on the eventual inclusion
of a Bill of Rights in the Constitution, Henry’s
faction was unwilling to ratify the Constitution
because it posed an unacceptable threat to state
sovereignty and liberty.
Today,
both major parties have abandoned all interest in
preserving a strong role for the states in our
system. Any
politician who dares to declare his or her support
for states’ rights is likely to be labeled a
racist. Meanwhile,
Congress continues a relentless course of reducing
states to mere administrative districts.
We have
forgotten the warning of the Founders.
A nation without the built-in inconvenience
of two tiers — autonomous states and a limited
federal authority — cannot assure liberty.
There is no doubt that this two-tiered
arrangement is cumbersome, but then so is the
separation of powers of the federal authority
itself. They
are the price of personal freedom.
Every
four years we live through a Leap Year, the
Olympics, a presidential election and the cry for
abolition of the Electoral College, which is just
another constitutional device to preserve state
sovereignty. Once
again, we must quell this call for ill-advised
reform.
The
danger of consolidation that an earlier generation
of Virginians perceived at the 1788 convention
remains. A
nation of 300 million people who directly elect
their president would have been a nightmare to them.
To
avoid that nightmare, we should try to understand
why the Constitution was designed as it was.
--
November 15,
2004
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