I often speak ill of Democrats, and for the most part have little respect for their politics. Senator Zell Miller (D-Georgia), however, is one Democrat I have a lot of respect for. In this article that I learned about from Vox Popoli, Senator Miller points out that much of the reason our political system, at the national level, has been going downhill over the last century is because of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, which allowed for the popular election of Senators.
Few people today know that the Founding Fathers never intended for senators to be popularly elected. The Constitution originally provided that senators would be chosen by state legislatures. The purpose was to provide the states — as states — an institutional role in the federal government. In effect, senators were to function as ambassadors from the states, which were expected to retain a large degree of sovereignty even after ratification of the Constitution, thereby ensuring that their rights would be protected in a federal system.
The role of senators as representatives of the states was assured by a procedure, now forgotten, whereby states would “instruct” their senators how to vote on particular issues. Such instructions were not conveyed to members of the House of Representatives because they have always been popularly elected and are not expected to speak for their states, but only for their constituents.