Back in July, Hendrik Hertzberg did an excellent piece in The New Yorker about what Alexander Hamilton thought about parliamentary rules that require more than a simple majority to come to a decision. Simply put, Hamilton didn’t like those kinds of rules. Here’s a snippet from Federalist No. 22:

To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser.… The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority.

In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings.

Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good. And yet, in such a system, it is even happy when such compromises can take place: for upon some occasions things will not admit of accommodation; and then the measures of government must be injuriously suspended, or fatally defeated. It is often, by the impracticability of obtaining the concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction. Its situation must always savor of weakness, sometimes border upon anarchy.

I think that puts to rest the idea that the Founding Fathers put the filibuster into the design of the Senate. I mean, honestly, what is Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) talking about?

“This is the most important and most dangerous restructuring of Senate rules since Thomas Jefferson wrote them at the beginning of our country,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said. “It’s another raw exercise of political power to permit the majority to do anything it wants, whenever it wants to do it.”

I know that Thomas Jefferson codified the Senate rules in his Manual of Parliamentary Practice, but one of his rules was that “No one is to speak impertinently or beside the question, superfluously, or tediously.” Additionally, the first Senate (over which John Adams presided) allowed the presiding officer to make a disorderly senator shut up and sit down. Under either scenario, Sen. Ted Cruz would not be allowed to read Dr. Seuss on the Senate floor.

I do agree that the rules change is a big deal. I’m still thinking through all the ways I think this simple change will alter our political universe. It’s taking up all my processing power right now. Maybe I’ll have something by the weekend.