The New Buzzword in America: Representation
Representation is more than just a buzzword—it’s the path back to the self-governing republic our founders established.
The Chamber of the House of Representatives. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Democracy has become a buzzword, but our founders had something else in mind: representation. Democracy in America has grown since its founding, a development made famous by Alexis de Tocqueville’s influential tour. Recently, however, democracy has been turned into a weapon. Politicians pit us against each other because, according to them, democracy dies if they don’t win.
But our founders never believed that democracy could survive without a mechanism to refine the people’s interests. Unrestrained democracies allow the people’s worst instincts to surface, to gain votes and retain power, much like a parent who acts as an enabler to their child because saying no isn’t popular. Giving people what they want is easier than holding them accountable. Saying yes keeps the peace for a while, but eventually, debts stack up, promises are broken, and disappointment mounts.
The problem with democracy, as Jonah Goldberg recently said, is that it “kinda sucks.” But a democracy that is appropriately focused and disciplined within a republic embodies virtue and extends liberty. That’s why our founders established a system of layered republics to funnel the people’s passions—a system of checks and balances, of rules and institutions, that shares power through representation while retaining authority.
And that is why the new buzzword for this generation is representation. Representation empowers citizens to engage in self-government. It gives them the power and responsibility to solve their own problems.
“The people in charge did not listen to them. The people in charge did not meet them where they are. The people in charge spent a lot of time amplifying their voice through a microphone, social media ads, or TV hits. The people in charge spent time with the fanatics—the radicals who came to see them on stage.”
About five years ago, I was like most Americans: frustrated with the finger-pointing and abdication of responsibility. I took a hard look at America’s leaders, and I was worried. So I decided to get involved. I showed up at my local party meetings, volunteered for local candidates, and knocked on a lot of doors. And when I did, I asked one simple question:
“What do you think the problem is?”
The most common response was Congress. But it was what they said next that was most telling. They said, “things will never change.” This sent me on a mission. Through those and other conversations—in coffee shops, hotel lobbies, and front porches—I began to see the deeper problem: America has a representation crisis.
What I learned is that while representation is a problem, it is also the solution. I would occasionally come across the radical, who thought the other side was evil, authoritarian, socialist, fascist, and set on world domination. But most people I met were extremely rational about the issues. If I asked questions about immigration policy or debt reduction, I was met with honest answers that recognized the complex dichotomy of the problems. When I proposed solutions that would require compromise with the other side, people were willing to make deals, but they didn’t believe the people in charge would be.
That’s because the people in charge did not listen to them. The people in charge did not meet them where they are. The people in charge spent a lot of time amplifying their voice through a microphone, social media ads, or TV hits. The people in charge spent time with the fanatics—the radicals who came to see them on stage. When they did listen, they were met with passion from those who circled their power.
So, I hit the books, combing through American and world history, looking for answers. One word kept coming up: representation.
Much of the debate at the Philadelphia Convention was over representation. Our founders compromised on a bicameral Congress, dividing authority between the states, in the Senate, and the people, in the House. They established a census to be taken every ten years to count the population and apportion representation among the many to form one body. As the population grew, so did the House of Representatives.
It was representation that was manipulated through the Three-fifths compromise, which allowed slaveholders more power in Congress, a power they used to extend and preserve their slave oligarchy.* This eventually led to the Civil War. During the Gilded Age, a new power emerged in America: the American corporation.
While some Democrats sought to revive the legacy of the Southern cause, many Republicans aligned themselves with rising corporate interests. This left people on both sides increasingly unrepresented. Out of the dysfunction rose the bully pulpit and the imperial presidency. Teddy Roosevelt believed that big must be fought by big. He expanded the executive branch to check the corporate powers. Woodrow Wilson built on his foundation and concentrated more power in the presidency.
Meanwhile, the country was growing out of control, and Congress was struggling to keep pace. The new corporate powers attracted millions of immigrants to America, concentrating them in urban areas and shifting the balance of political representation. The 1920 census was the first to record a population exceeding 100 million and to note that more people were living in urban areas than in rural ones.
This led, for the first time in American history, to Congress failing to fulfill its constitutional duty to write a new apportionment bill. The House and Senate debated for several years, fighting over who should be counted (all people or just citizens) and how many representatives there should be for the population. Eventually, by 1929, worn down from arguing, they gave up and wrote The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929.
This bill capped the number of seats in the House of Representatives and maintained the status quo that all persons be counted for purposes of apportionment. Since then, the population has grown from nearly 100 million in 1929 to over 330 million today. The ratio has increased from 1:220,000 to 1:756,000.
This increase in the ratio has separated the average citizen from the representatives who serve them. The distance between them makes it difficult for the citizen to be involved and for the representative to listen to his or her constituents. It places barriers around the representative that insulate them from the reason and virtue of their fellow man.
The shrinkage in representation has also diminished the sphere of power. Madison’s idea was to extend the sphere to strengthen the republic and refine democracy. The result is a concentration of power into a group of leaders who are willing to say anything and do anything to capture it.
This brings us to our solution: Extend the sphere of power by increasing the number of representatives in the House.
At first, it seems like extending the sphere makes a large, bureaucratic government even bigger; in reality, however, it would empower the American people to rein in the bureaucracy and reduce the size of the government. It encourages individuals to take the problem into their own hands and resolve it. This allows them to exercise both power and responsibility simultaneously, just as our founders envisioned.
Many within the current, concentrated sphere of power are reluctant to support this idea, fearing that the fanatics they see screaming at them on stage are not suitable for power. But only a small minority of people are willing to follow them around, hoping for a chance at a job. The majority of Americans are exercising responsibility—hard at work building businesses and raising their families.
There are many more on the outskirts of power who, while supporting this idea, do not understand how to communicate it to average people. But the reality is, representation is as intuitive as the latest Apple product. It may seem strange at first, but the average American already has a solid understanding of representation, and once they engage with it, productivity will skyrocket.
As my friend Walter Clapp, President of No Cap Fund, says, “representation is a bi-directional relationship.” That’s a two-way relationship, for us non-lawyers. Americans hire representatives every day to service the needs they do not have time to address on their own. Many Americans are representatives in their own right, serving as lawyers, electricians, and customer service agents.
To empower people, we must first give them the right vocabulary to make this change happen. It’s like going to a bar and ordering a drink. If you ask for a whiskey, you might get anything from Jim Beam or Jack Daniel’s to Johnny Walker Black. But if you ask for a Woodford Reserve double oak, you end up with just what you want. Responsible Americans need to show up at their local party meetings and ask for representation. And they will likely need to explain it to those leading the group.
Representation is three things. It’s communication: a representative is responsible for informing their district and listening to their concerns. It’s power: a representative then goes to Washington to write legislation that affects not just their district but the whole country. And it’s their responsibility: the power vested in representatives should be wielded with care, following the rules established in the Constitution.
The waiter who takes your order is your representative. He or she informs you by sharing the specials, listens when you ask questions about the menu, and communicates your order to the kitchen. If something goes wrong, a good waiter recognizes where the mistake happened and corrects it as best as possible. If the error were on the waiter’s end, most patrons will understand as long as he or she is honest and there is a plan to resolve the issue. If they ignore the issue, the customer might call the manager over, make a scene, and possibly storm out.
After the buzzword of representation catches fire, the next thing people will need to understand is the difference between single-member and multimember districts. While representation may be a new concept for many Americans, there are experts out there who have been contemplating this issue for years.
Single-member districts are what we have now, where each district elects one representative in a winner-take-all race. Supporters of single-member districts recognize that power is a pyramid that must be funneled upward to be exercised effectively. Increasing the size of the house and shrinking the size of the districts creates a smaller room for people and their representative to meet in. Smaller rooms with fewer people mean less screaming and yelling and more opportunity for civil and difficult conversations.
Multimember districts are districts that elect more than one representative to serve the same area. Advocates will emphasize the balance between different parties and the potential to eliminate gerrymandering. The room is large, however, with many managers present, which may cause confusion for the customer about who to speak with to get something done.
Single-member districts make more sense in this citizen’s eyes because average people want a system that is fair but not overly complicated. They have busy lives and want something that encourages participation rather than something that requires study. And average people, more than most, understand the limitations of human nature. They have no delusions about a perfect system. Humans are imperfect, and while eliminating Gerrymandering sounds like a good idea, it fails to eliminate the ambition behind gerrymandering, which would be like eliminating air because “it imparts to fire a destructive agency.”
Representation is more than just a buzzword—it’s the path back to the self-governing republic our founders established.
So, the next time someone complains about the government, the president, or the bureaucracy; the next time a politician extols the virtues of democracy, take that opportunity to change the conversation by asking them about representation. Ask, “why do we have 435 members in the House of Representatives?” And if they don’t know, share the power with them.
* Contrary to the way it is normally presented, slaveholding states wanted each slave to be counted fully so that they would have even more power in Congress.