Senate Reform Needed!

...In the United States! (Sorry, I couldn't resist. I know there's a big Canadian senate reform story but that would take more time to go into than I have today. This is just a quick fun one.)

Yesterday this was going on. A Democratic Senator is in the hospital having brain surgery. Now it looks like he will pull through, but this gave rise to an instant balance of power issue in the Senate. Just as an explanation, the balance of power in the Senate isn't important just because of votes. Its all about collegiality, unlike the 435 bloody mouthed hyenas that make their home in the US House of Representatives. The reason that this is important is that it has all sorts of procedural effects. For instance, it would change committee chairmanships and how many people from each party are on each committee. that stuff can affect such issues as what gets voted on in the first place. So, the sick Senator's one vote is actually a very important issue.

But here's the really interesting sentence from the article:

"Should Johnson not be able to complete his term, which ends in 2008, South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds, a Republican, would appoint his replacement, which could shift the balance of power in the Senate."

Umm...what?

Forget about the procedural aspects. Fine, the US doesn't do by-elections. What is interesting to me is that the Governor might find it acceptable to appoint a Republican in the first place. To me, that seems to be a small form of corruption. The governor may be a republican, but he is also an elected representative of the United States of America. My thought is that if you are going to sound off as the paragon of democracy to the world, you should be democratic (no dear reader, I don't mean Democratic). Wouldn't it be great, and statesmanlike and wonderful if he came out with a speech talking about the will of the voters and that he felt it was important to appoint a person who could stand in the shoes of the sick senator, and then he appointed a democrat with similar positions?

Yes. I know how naive that is. But a man can dream can't he?