David Edwards, Staff Writer
Ideology: Center-Right | Writing from: Pittsburgh, PA

I want to start by expressing my deepest condolences for the Kennedy family after the loss of late Senator Ted Kennedy to brain cancer earlier this week.  As a nation, we are in mourning for the last serving member of one of the great political dynasties in American history.  However, I would like to speak to a topic that was talked about somewhat before his death and has since become something of a “hot-button” issue.

Last week the late Senator from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy, suggested via letter to state Senate legislators and the Democrat Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, that the law be changed to allow swift replacement of representatives should a vacancy in the Senate occur.  This came only months after Sen. Kennedy publicly announced his diagnosis of a brain tumor, to which he succumbed this week.  It appears that a dying man was seeking his last wish: to preserve the “continuity of representation” for his constituents in Massachusetts.  At first glance, this attempt to preserve representation and to put the people of Massachusetts before all else is highly altruistic and admirable.  Senator Kennedy even stressed the importance of the republican system by saying that “it is vital for the Commonwealth to have two voices speaking for the needs of its citizens and two votes in the Senate during the approximately five months between a vacancy and an election.”

The republican system is indeed inviolable; I agree with Senator Kennedy on that much.  Our system of government is explicitly outlined in the Constitution and I am happy that Senator Kennedy likewise cared so deeply for its integrity and seamlessness.  However, when one considers Senator Kennedy’s past stances, his most recent passion for representative democracy at the level of his Commonwealth appears a façade for party politics and political entrapment.

This was not the first time that Senator Kennedy had advocated changing that specific law.  In 2004 he strongly supported a bill, which later became the very law he bemoaned in his letter to Massachusetts legislators, that would mandate a special election be held 145 to 160 days (roughly 5 months) following a vacancy in Massachusetts Senate positions. In 2004 the junior Senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry, might have been elected president, at which point the then-Republican Governor, Mitt Romney, could have appointed the Senator of his choosing for the remainder of the Senatorial term.  The Democratic Party did not fancy losing one of its seats to the Republicans and thus Ted Kennedy and his party sought to change the law.  It is not just Senator Kennedy and the Democratic Party’s sudden change of heart that was incriminating; it was the drastic change in political climates that really indicted them of political tricks.  In 2009, one might say the tables have been politically turned with a healthcare vote looming in the fall and political sentiment changing on the Democratic Party as a whole.  One could say the Democrats need every vote they can get.  The 2004 law pushed through the state legislature by the Democratic Party was, as of last week, a hindrance because if a vacancy should have arisen in Massachusetts, the current Democrat Governor Duval Patrick would have had no right under law to appoint an interim Senator.  And so, the Democratic Party and Ted Kennedy went to work again trying to turn the tables back to the way they were.  In the aftermath of Kennedy’s death, Massachusetts lawmakers, namely Duval Patrick, have said they will posthumously honor Kennedy’s wishes and change the law for him as though they are doing Kennedy a favor and not the Democratic Party.  The Democratic Party has highlighted both his illness and now his death for political gain in the Senate.

The specific legislative and political struggle between “interim” and fairly elected Senators is inherently difficult to parse because there are major Constitutional themes at play that, in some cases, legitimize political hypocrisy.  Our goal as well-informed members of the electorate is to limit the excesses and tricks of government while maintaining the rights afforded to us in the founding documents of this nation.  Last week, Kennedy’s fundamental argument for a reversion back to the previous law was that his constituents were entitled to the right to continuous representation in the legislative body, which is something that everyone inherently expects of their government.  I support that notion wholeheartedly.  However, by supporting this reversion to undisturbed representative democracy, one unknowingly endorses extraneous political deceits such as the misleading party politics behind appointed representatives and officials.  As we all know, one deceit begets another, just look to the recent financial crisis to see the positive feedback effect of—in that case—financial deceit.  Before too long, deceit will erode the legislative fabric of our nation and threaten its very foundations (hence the beginning of the American Revolution).  While this may seem drastic, so too did a meltdown of the world’s financial system when banks initiated aggressive lending policies some years ago.

By opposing the Democratic Party and its capricious legislative desires, the American people stand to reaffirm and strengthen their rights.  For example, Kennedy and Co. recently endorsed the gubernatorial appointment of an interim Senator, which I believe undermines the concept of a representative democracy.  Our Constitution, otherwise known as the law, explicitly outlines that the most important government representatives (i.e. Senators, Congressional Representatives, Presidents, etc.) are elected by the people themselves (don’t quibble about the Electoral College, please), not by people elected by the people.  While I find it difficult to advocate a system of government in which representation is not seamless, the principle and practice of a representative democracy is far more important than streamlined representation in Congress.  It is for this sole reason (and it’s a pretty good reason) that one should oppose the deception the Democratic Party, which used Ted Kennedy and his illness as a means of furthering its political tricks. We should be careful not to cast the rights issued to us by the Constitution out of the window for something as superficial as temporarily disturbed Senate representation because streamlined and caring governments are fleeting, but our rights should not be.