What Would The Founding Fathers Say About Today's Communications Technology?

My business partner and I recently found ourselves pondering the question that is the title of today's post.

Considering a collection of men including Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, one cannot help but believe they would be thrilled at the immense scope of instant, broadly-distributed online communications options available today.

Imagine Franklin twittering. Or Jefferson's daily political blog. What would Sam Adams and Tom Paine have done with freely-available blogging capabilities?

Surely, the founding fathers of the American experiment would be pleased to see such freedom of expression available so ubiquitously.

However, at the same time, I would hazard to guess that they would have tweaked the design of government a bit, in light of such freely-available tools to incite passions in the citizenry.

For example, consider this post from just a year ago. It has probably become the most-searched and -read post on this blog.

If Franklin & Co. were writing the Constitution today, amidst our modern communications technologies, I think that, if they opted for direct election of Senators, they would condition nomination for that office to those who had served in statewide or other elected federal posts, i.e., US Representative, for at least 6-8 years.

Their original intent was clearly to represent the States, not the people, per se, in the Senate. Today's one-issue wonders, such as Patty Murray (a/k/a the mom in tennis shoes) from Washington, or Wonderboy from Illinois, would not have been elected because they would not have met qualifications for the office.

I think the founders would also, were they alive today, impose term limits. They never envisioned a professional political class. In their day, Congress didn't even meet for most of the year. It was a part-time job, and its members had to return home to actually make their living.

Having seen today's full-time, professional political class in action at the federal level, I believe the Founders would prevent that through term limits, limits on the amount of time during the year in which Congress could be in session, or draconian limits on Congressional pay, with the removal of a pension, in order to reinforce the nature of the offices as service to the citizenry, rather than a lifetime career.

With such opinion-shaping power available via free online blogs, inexpensive websites, and the interlinking of cell phones and the internet, I believe the Framers would have sought to provide more buffers for parts of the federal government from the increased influences of immediate, broadscale public opinion on the deliberations of Congress.