As I watch the continued dysfunction of Congress, I can’t help but think back to the intent of our Founding Fathers.

Alexander Hamilton is considered one of the Fathers of our Constitution. He favored a national government that was stronger than the states based on his personal experience of poor support of the Continental Army, as he was assigned by General George Washington to go begging among the various colonies.

The Founders thought they had designed a form of government that could effectively run the country’s affairs and safeguard its economic interests. They saw their creation of Congress as the means to unite states and weigh their competing interests with justice. 

Hamilton expected that the people would send representatives to Congress that were the most informed and most able to govern.

Representation in Congress today has become very perverted from the Founders’ intent. When it was time to certify the 2020 presidential election, Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri was the first to say he would oppose certification. His explanation for this was he was representing Missourians who had concern about the election.

In fact, he was not representing the vast majority of Missourians who had no concerns whatsoever, including many who had voted for Trump.

When President Obama was elected, Senator Mitch McConnell from Kentucky organized Republicans to oppose anything Obama wanted to do toward keeping him from a second term. In fact, he was not representing the significant majority of Americans who voted for Obama and his vision of leadership.

Politics has always been a part of our elections and is often dirty. But once you are elected, it is time to stop your politics and step up to your responsibilities to govern. 

The titles are U.S. Senator and U.S. Representative, not Missouri Senator or Kentucky Senator. You are in Congress to “effectively run the country’s affairs,” and to “unite states and weigh their competing interests with justice.” That is the type of representation that makes our government work.

Instead, we can’t pass a budget and provide the finances to keep the government running. We can’t pass legislation based on compromises to improve border security and support our allies threatened by war. We can’t reassure NATO allies that have counted on us since 1945, the same allies that supported us after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

We have a lot of people representing us that think they only represent some of us that aren’t well-informed and have shown no ability to govern. 

Hamilton must be spinning in his grave.

There is a movement in eastern Oregon for several rural counties to leave Oregon and join Idaho. The premise is that Oregon representation in Congress is dominated by the majority of people who live on the Pacific Coast and favor the Democratic Party – thus eastern Oregon citizens “have no representation.”

I have heard similar thinking in Illinois, specifically that Chicago should be spun off as the 51st state so Illinois legislative representation reflects down-state politics. 

As always, there is an historical lesson that relates to this.

In the first half of the 1800s, the U.S. kept adding more states, most of them being non-slave states by law. Slave-owning states could see they would become a considerable minority in Congress and would be unable to block laws to end slavery. Their decision was to leave the U.S. completely. 

This started our Civil War, and we know how that turned out. 

If portions of the country check out whenever their local interests conflict with the national majority, then you don’t really have a country – just a loose confederation that can only unite in the rare instance everyone agrees. 

That is exactly what the Constitution was created to avoid.

To mindlessly parrot the self interests of your constituents without making an effort to merge them with other’s self interests isn’t governing, it is lobbying. It is anti-American through the filter of the design of our Constitution. 

And for those with a religious filter, it is un-Christian to promote self interests over serving others toward a collective good.

We own this. Many of the people we elect are capable of governing, and they do so by working with political opponents to effectively run the country’s affairs while justly weighing conflicting interests. 

The MAGA movement has given us a different kind of representative, one who would rather shut the government down before stooping to any compromise. 

Democrats also have some representatives like this, Cori Bush being one in St. Louis.

Obviously we need to elect people who can govern, who can put their politics aside once in office and govern a nation. 

How do you know who is capable of that? Search the Lugar Center Bipartisan Index, which ranks members of Congress by their ability to work with others. Doubt the credibility of the index? Richard Lugar was a Republican senator from conservative Indiana that earned a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his ability to work with political opponents.

Hawley ranks 93 out of 100, one of the worst. Illinois Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth rank 47th and 48th, respectively, moderately in the middle of the pack regarding compromise. 

Our U.S. Representative, Mike Bost, ranks 59th out of 435 representatives, legitimizing his political claim that he will work with Democrats to fairly govern as he was elected to do.

If you like Bost, vote for him because he has proven he can govern, not because he is a Republican. 

This is the filter we need to apply when we vote this fall. Our Constitution depends on it.