Alexander Hamilton called it—almost. In his essay “Federalist No. 65,” Hamilton recognized the possibility that the Senate’s judgment in an impeachment trial “will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.” He pushed that concern aside, though, and concluded that only the Senate was up to the task of conducting a presidential-impeachment trial with the “requisite neutrality.” No other body was “sufficiently dignified” and “sufficiently independent” to serve as a “fit depositary of this important trust.”
Hamilton’s confidence is hard to square with the Senate leadership’s own stated approach to the proceedings to come. Last month, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell set off waves of indignation among Democrats and reportedly unsettled members of his own party when he announced that he would be working “in total coordination with the White House counsel's office" throughout the Senate impeachment trial process.
All of this is unfolding in an election year, against a backdrop of heavy pessimism about how political pressure will affect individual senators’ votes. No case has yet been presented and no evidence heard, but President Trump’s acquittal by the Senate is widely recognized as a foregone conclusion.
So what was Hamilton thinking? If he anticipated that partisanship could undermine the fairness of an impeachment trial, why did he—and the rest of the Founders—ultimately entrust the president’s conviction or acquittal to the Senate?
One answer is that today’s Senate is not the Senate of the Founders’ making. The Constitution originally provided for the selection of senators by their state legislatures, a measure that was intended to “keep down the turbulence of democracy,” as the Constitutional Convention delegate Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania put it. But thanks to the 17th Amendment, ratified in 1913, almost a century and a half after the Founding, senators are now chosen through direct election by the people of their states. This was not a technical tweak but a fundamental design change.
Those who lament the passage of the 17th Amendment—including Tea Party activists and sitting Republican Senators Mike Lee, of Utah, and Rand Paul, of Kentucky—have tended to focus on its disruption of the Founders’ grand vision for federalism, wherein power is divided between the national and state governments to protect state sovereignty, as well as to safeguard citizens from potential abuse by a single unchecked authority. As Roger Sherman, a convention delegate representing Connecticut, explained in a July 1789 letter to John Adams, the idea was that the “senators, being eligible by the legislatures of the several states, and dependent on them for reelection, will be vigilant in supporting their rights against infringement by the legislative or executive of the United States.”