The United States Senate is dying

Picture a forum where some of America’s most prominent men and women assemble in a healthy, civilised way to discuss and hash out the country’s major issues for the good of the people. This forum, theoretically, was supposed to be the United States Senate, a group of distinguished legislators who would introduce reason into the national debate. George Washington himself called the Senate a ‘saucer,’ a cooling agent to the scalding legislation that came out of the House of Representatives.

My how far the Senate has fallen.

In the past, being a US senator was a point of pride. You were an elite member of an elite club working in an elite institution. Some of America’s greatest politicians made their living as senators – think Ted Kennedy, Sam Nunn, Richard Lugar, and John McCain. Many US presidents: John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Barack Obama were former US senators.