What U.S. Senators Represent

Jack Duckworth's Aug. 18 letter to the editor regarding the health-care debate bemoaned the defiance of Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) of the prevailing mood at the town hall meetings he attended. "It used to be that senators and House members represented the will of their constituents, as I believe the Constitution envisioned," Mr. Duckworth wrote.

The Constitution envisioned no such thing, especially for senators. One reason senators have a six-year term is to give them political cover when they defy their constituents because they think the majority of them are wrong.

Indeed, it was the Founders' horror that the will of the majority of Americans was often wrong and often threatened minority rights that led them to Philadelphia in 1787 to create the Constitution. That Constitution resulted not in a democracy in which "the will of their constituents" always prevailed but a republic in which elected representatives were tasked with balancing that will against their best judgment.

BRUCE G. KAUFFMANN

Alexandria

Bruce G. Kauffmann writes a weekly history column for 29 newspapers.