That specific line makes it sound like Franklin thought despotism would be a result of the Constitution. But the full quote makes it obvious that he thought very highly of the Constitution:
...this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other. I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution.... It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does... Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best.[0]
He means that the Constitution will continue until no other form of government but despotism is possible, not that it leads to despotism.
Also note that despotism and tyranny are not exactly the same form of government (the main relevant difference is that despotism can be benevolent), and that the distinction would have been more significant in Franklin's time.[1] I think that a more modern phrasing would be something like:
...the Constitution will be administered well for a while, and will last until the country becomes so corrupt that only a despot could maintain order.
The separation of powers seems to be our only saving grace at the moment.
The notion that one style of government is appropriate for all peoples in all places seems absurd. The US constitution was written up by and for people in a particular place and situation and the tensions that existed then look to have escalated to the civil war and these tensions look to remain today. It's interesting to read the anti-federalist papers.
I agree. The independent judiciary, in my opinion, is what has been largely responsible for the effectiveness of the U.S Government since it's inception. This concept of a body that can rule on the constitutionality of laws and acts was a revolutionary concept.
I want to take pains to emphasis that this is relative. Contemporary issues and criticisms aside (not to mention those raised in the article), it's a system that has served remarkably well, especially compared to its peers.
Yup, and indeed our problems have originated when we ignore the rock-paper-scissors nature of our federal government. As I mentioned in another post, we should have seen a lot more impeachments of federal officials over time.
Direct election of senators was a huge mistake that has dramatically restructured the balance of power. There were originally four branches. The state governments were way more powerful.
Up to a point yes, but the politicization of the judiciary through elected judicial posts and other elected official posts such as election organisation and drawing of electoral boundaries introduce serious weaknesses into the system.
The author is arguing precisely that the constitution should not be put on a pedestal, and that recent political deadlocks might be due to the constitution not being perfect, and not human error.
The fallacy here is that deadlocks are a bad thing, usually they are not. You don't want a slim majority being able to drive the government at a breakneck pace. When society is deadlocked, government should be too. You want action only when there is fairly broad agreement.
Exactly. While I'm sure they didn't mean "deadlock", delay was precisely what the framers had in mind. The emphasis on super-majorities and agreement between multiple bodies was designed to keep mob mentality from fundamentally changing the people's rights in the heat of the moment.
I'd argue this has eroded in recent decades due to lack of transparency, which has greatly hindered the third branch, the Judiciary, from being able to act as effectively as it might have otherwise.
> which has greatly hindered the third branch, the Judiciary, from being able to act as effectively as it might have otherwise.
I don't think that the American judiciary's problem is that it's hindered in its actions.
Historically, we should have seen more impeachments of federal officials; Congress needs to wield its authority in an exercise of checks and balances on the executive and judicial branches.
Well, the idea of Congress impeaching judges frankly terrifies me, and given that Congress holds up most executive appointments as it is, I'm not sure they could do much more damage there.
The Ethics Committees largely hand-slap only the most gross violations of their members. I see your intent there, but I'd much rather see Congress holding a higher standard of itself.
If you're referring to the overreach of Federal officials, then that gets a bit more sticky. Yes, it should be reined in, but when I see one Congressmen one-upping another on how we need to be "tough" or have "no tolerance" for this or that, I'm little surprised that our police and intelligence agencies act the way they do.
> when I see one Congressmen one-upping another on how we need to be "tough" or have "no tolerance" for this or that, I'm little surprised that our police and intelligence agencies act the way they do.
Puritanism dies hard. I'd say the constitution is working perfectly: the government we have is the one we deserve and one that really does reflect what this country, on the whole, wants. People in this country are still overall prudes who want harsh punishments, and that's what we've got. We don't need to fix the constitution, because that won't fix the root cause which is that our society needs fixing.
>I'd say the constitution is working perfectly: the government we have is the one we deserve and one that really does reflect what this country, on the whole, wants.
Can you justify this in a non-self-referential way, ie: via data other than election outcomes?
I'd agree with that if we had Congressional term limits to make Congress more answerable to the people. As it is, incumbency is way too powerful and is partly to blame for the dysfunction we're currently seeing.
At the end of the day, I think that making government more accountable to its people is more directly established by migrating more power to the states, and away from the federal government.
I have a much greater likelihood of engaging my state and local politicians than I do my federal representatives, and while New Hampshire residents have more direct representation than, say, California residents, it's still dramatically improved over our representation by federal reps.
This of course comes with its own set of pitfalls, for which the federal government has been placed as arbiter, and ceding / being granted power with which to remedy, but in my opinion, term limits seem to be more of a band-aid for a hemorrhaging wound than a a root cause fix.
"Deadlock is good" works in a system where the disagreeing sides are reasonable and willing to debate and compromise to produce a solution with broader support.
That is not the system we have: we have a fully-polarized system in which each major party's agenda consists primarily of ensuring that the maximum number of items from the other party's agenda to be enacted will be zero (I say "maximum", because rolling back or repealing any previously-enacted items is also an option). Since they're both quite good at the tactics, the result is inaction even in times when action is needed, to the detriment of the American people.
> "Deadlock is good" works in a system where the disagreeing sides are reasonable and willing to debate and compromise to produce a solution with broader support.
This is not correct. Sometimes inaction is much better than action. In the case of a corrupt government, inaction is always preferable.
The US constitution is built to create deadlock. See checks/balances. It is this deadlock that has lead to American prosperity. While it is unable to do good, it is also unable to do harm.
I suppose if you believe that the only correct amount of government action is zero, you might feel that way. But some of the rest of us enjoy having things like property rights.
The constitution was built to create compromises and shared power. It was not built to create deadlock.
The question this essay asks is, how effective is it at those goals? Are there situations where it could all collapse? If yes, are there other systems which are less likely to collapse?
The idea that any action is needed at all is often incorrect. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing.
A perfect case in point, the patriot act and the department of homeland security. That represented action taken. Solutions developed. Where they the right actions and the right solutions? Not in the least. Would we be better off without them? Probably.
Actually, deadlock should be the normal state of affairs. The world doesn't change that much from year to year that the federal legislature has to do a whole lot.
People who complain about "deadlock" are really complaining Congress isn't implementing their legal and budgetary priorities. But that isn't because there's something wrong; that's because not enough of their countrymen agree.
I felt the author made a good point related to this, that the current system, and the current belief in its self-corrections, may be a serious problem during deadlock:
"When politicians today praise America’s system of checks and balances, they seem to understand it as a self-correcting mechanism: When one branch pushes too hard, the other branches must push back, preserving equilibrium. That understanding actually encourages politicians to overreact, in the belief that they are playing a vital constitutional role. It also encourages complacency, because a system that rights itself requires no painful compromises to preserve."
The problem the author points out with the American constitution is not that we have deadlock, and then we must compromise to get around that deadlock. The problem the author points out is that we can get deadlock, and the system itself has no recovery mechanism for bad actors; deadlock makes it possible for the entire system to collapse. Parliamentary systems have new elections when the existing government cannot reach a deal. That is, the system itself has a failsafe for true deadlock.
Ambiguous wording in some places; crazy electoral college method for elections that ensures a two-party system; and the fact that there have been over 20 things called amendments... all suggest that there are things wrong with the American constitution. Does it mean it was a bad thing overall? No. But to say that there's nothing wrong with it is to say that nothing in it is stale - and regardless of your political leanings, I think everyone can agree that the Third Amendment has been pretty stale for quite some time, for example.
It was a product of it's time. And there were real reasons at the time for a number of those elements.
- The electoral college was mean to provide a bit of separation between the population and election to the Presidential office. Remember, in the 1790s, direct election of what was envisioned as a powerful post worried many. While it is largely a formality now, the electoral college provided a degree of separation to allow for cooler heads to prevent the spontaneous election of someone unfit. (Personal thought: If Trump somehow gets the nomination, I motion that this be the perfect test of that body's powers.)
- I'm not sure what one can take issue with regarding the amendment process. It's ensured that the document has remained flexible over the years, and was a mechanism created from the outset to fix flaws and limitations known even then. The inclusion of this process could be seen as a nod to the charges Mason and others brought that the new Constitution did not do enough to protect individual liberties. There was not enough broad support at the time to determine what they should be, and the US needed a better system quickly to replace the Articles of Confederation. The amendment process allowed them to move forward and tackle the issue at a later time.
- In Revolutionary times, communications were either in person, or by letter. British soldiers stationed in the cities roamed in public, making meetings to discuss the state of affairs dangerous and difficult. Speaking of anything relating to disobedience to the King and Government in England was an arrestable offensive, a little cause or warrent was needed. So the private home was the preferred location.
Well now imagine that a new directive has been passed, and now a police officer has been assigned to live with you. It's all in the context of providing housing, but he is watching, listening, and will report a disloyal word up to his superiors. It's 18th century persistent surveillance, and the colonists were outraged.
... I'm not sure how "it was a product of it's time" is an appropriate rebuttal to "bits of it are stale". I'm genuinely puzzled that you think I need a history lesson, given I characterised parts of it as stale, which I would have thought inherently included the concept "it was a product of it's time" - that things that were once fresh and relevant are no longer so.
My apologies. I thought the "stale" comment was directed at the third amendment in particular. Most of what I was offering my rebuttal on was this:
>all suggest that there are things wrong with the American constitution.
Depending on your interpretation of "Wrong", I'd either agree or disagree. But the general point I was trying to make was that I don't find too many flaws with the examples you provided, and with regards to the third amendment, I was trying to provide an example in which even older parts of the document still have a lot of relevance, despite seeming stale at face value.
I didn't mean to insult your intelligence by providing the history lesson though; when I write a reply I do so imagining everyone in the discussion is reading, so while it is probably not new information to you, it might be to someone else. That's the real value in our talk here.
The thing is, you can appreciate a thing and admire it, and still see room for improvement. To claim there is nothing wrong with the US constitution (as the OP did) is to take a religiose view of it.
One other flaw I just put to wtbob below is that the way the document structures elections, the result is a two-party system that simply cannot adequately represent hundreds of millions of people of diverse backgrounds. Given that the document was raised explicitly in response to inadequate representation, that's a problem. Is it the worst problem ever in a constitution? No, but it is still an issue.
Edit: For comparison, here in Australia we have a couple of major parties, a couple of big minor parties, and a scattering of small parties all in government at the moment. Or in Germany, it's entirely normal for major parties to have to band together to form a majority in order to govern - from memory, Merkel's party gets about 25% of the vote, and has to create a coalition with other parties to get the majority required. There is space in these systems for new parties to rise, and the concept of "you're either for us or against us" is nowhere near as prevalent as in the US. These systems have their issues too, but they are more representative of their people due to their flexibility.
I agree with that. If there's one persistently leveled "flaw" in the structure of things, it was the failure to take into account the impact of political parties. There was far more concern about varying regional interests than political orientation.
Re: Germany, (I live abroad in Germany right now, it's fascinating to watch) The fascinating thing was in this latest election, her party very nearly won an outright majority, meaning it would have required no partners at all. I think the CSU/CDU felt just short of the 51% required. There's never been such a sweeping victory of that scale since the party's inception in the 50's.
I'll add one other bit, since it's more or less clear now that I am one of those who finds the Constitution to be a remarkable document: I think it's frequently revered for entirely the wrong reasons.
The beauty in the Constitution was that it laid out plans for a very well functioning system of government. It ensured changes had to be made with broad support across the nation, and provided for a very strong judiciary. It at once created a strong Federal system that at the same time was highly resistant to tyranny (again, relatively speaking.)
There have been many constitutions written across the world since, but many of them fall along the same lines as the perceptions and wishes espoused by those who misinterpret ours: They are thick documents that attempt to codify the nation's values and morals, as well as establish rules to live by.
The issue with that is that people and nations change, not to mention it is disadvantageous to the weak or minorities. It's why most of the third world has gone through numerous constitutions...
The U.S. Constitution did none of these things. It lays out a system of governance and conflict resolution. It specified powers. There is only one crime, treason, specif iced in the whole document. And most importantly, it laid out a system to make changes that would ensure the broadest support. That's it.
I groan every time some pundit makes the charge that we don't follow the constitution because of some moral outage or perceived cultural mistake being made that the Constitution is perceived to have provided for. It's the modern day bible, held up to be followed but never read.
A majority of the states appointed their presidential electors in the nation's first presidential election in 1789 by appointment by the legislature or by the governor and his cabinet. Presidential electors were appointed by state legislatures for almost a century.
The Founding Fathers in the Constitution did not require states to allow their citizens to vote for president, much less award all their electoral votes based upon the vote of their citizens.
The current system does not provide some kind of check on the "mobs." There have been 22,991 electoral votes cast since presidential elections became competitive (in 1796), and only 17 have been cast for someone other than the candidate nominated by the elector's own political party. 1796 remains the only instance when the elector might have thought, at the time he voted, that his vote might affect the national outcome.
The electors are and will be dedicated party activists of the winning party who meet briefly in mid-December to cast their totally predictable rubberstamped votes in accordance with their pre-announced pledges.
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld state laws guaranteeing faithful voting by presidential electors (because the states have plenary power over presidential electors).
In a winner-take-all state, if Trump is nominated and wins in that state, his party's electors in that state will vote for him.
I looked back over that bit I wrote and felt it could have been a lot better. You're right, there's rarely been deviation between the popular vote and the electoral. It was envisioned that the electoral college would rarely produce a clear result, and when this system was implemented, many of those state laws you mentioned did not exist. (If I recall correctly, many of them came about after the Gore vs. Bush contest.
I do recall direct representation being a cited concern, though I agree that yes, it's original function doesn't seem to have been needed. But I couldn't tell you if that's because it's never been tested, or if it's because of the structure thereof that's prevented a test.
The Electoral College is not crazy; indeed, IMHO what we need is for the state legislatures to appoint their electors. What's crazy is the popular vote.
Electoral College by design was supposed to fail. The creators of the Constitution never expected political parties to become a thing.
The House of Representatives were supposed to elect our President, after the Electoral College became deadlocked. That was the design of the Constitution.
The fact of the matter is, the Electoral College is NOT functioning as designed. But whatever, that's how the laws of this country work and we are a country of laws.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country.
The national popular vote winner would receive all of the 270+ electoral votes of the enacting states.
The bill ensures that every vote, in every state, will matter equally in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.
Every vote would matter in the state counts and national count.
The bill has passed a total of 33 legislative chambers in 22 rural, small, medium, large, red, blue, and purple states states with 250 electoral votes.
The bill has been enacted by 11 jurisdictions possessing 165 electoral votes—61% of the 270 electoral votes necessary to activate it, including 4 small jurisdictions, 3 medium-size states, and 4 big states.
Congressional consent is not required for the National Popular Vote compact under prevailing U.S. Supreme Court rulings. However, because there would undoubtedly be time-consuming litigation about this aspect of the compact, National Popular Vote is working to introduce a bill in Congress for congressional consent.
The U.S. Constitution provides:
"No state shall, without the consent of Congress,… enter into any agreement or compact with another state…."
Although this language may seem straight forward, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, in 1893 and again in 1978, that the Compacts Clause can "not be read literally." In deciding the 1978 case of U.S. Steel Corporation v. Multistate Tax Commission, the Court wrote:
"Read literally, the Compact Clause would require the States to obtain congressional approval before entering into any agreement among themselves, irrespective of form, subject, duration, or interest to the United States.
"The difficulties with such an interpretation were identified by Mr. Justice Field in his opinion for the Court in [the 1893 case] Virginia v. Tennessee. His conclusion [was] that the Clause could not be read literally [and this 1893 conclusion has been] approved in subsequent dicta."
Specifically, the Court's 1893 ruling in Virginia v. Tennessee stated:
"Looking at the clause in which the terms 'compact' or 'agreement' appear, it is evident that the prohibition is directed to the formation of any combination tending to the increase of political power in the states, which may encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States."
The state power involved in the National Popular Vote compact is specified in Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 the U.S. Constitution:
"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors…."
In the 1892 case of McPherson v. Blacker (146 U.S. 1), the Court wrote:
"The appointment and mode of appointment of electors belong exclusively to the states under the constitution of the United States"
The National Popular Vote compact would not "encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States" because there is simply no federal power -- much less federal supremacy -- in the area of awarding of electoral votes in the first place.
In the 1978 case of U.S. Steel Corporation v. Multistate Tax Commission, the compact at issue specified that it would come into force when seven or more states enacted it. The compact was silent as to the role of Congress. The compact was submitted to Congress for its consent. After encountering fierce political opposition from various business interests concerned about the more stringent tax audits anticipated under the compact, the compacting states proceeded with the implementation of the compact without congressional consent. U.S. Steel challenged the states' action. In upholding the constitutionality of the implementation of the compact by the states without congressional consent, the U.S. Supreme Court applied the interpretation of the Compacts Clause from its 1893 holding in Virginia v. Tennessee, writing that:
"the test is whether the Compact enhances state power quaod [with regard to] the National Government."
The Court also noted that the compact did not
"authorize the member states to exercise any powers they could not exercise in its absence."
Perhaps I should have been broader with the criticism. Basically, it's a significant problem with the way US federal elections work that they basically enforce a two-party system. A nation of 300 million people that is somehow adequately represented by only one of two parties?
Not allowing for multipolar politics is a problem with the constitution. Mind you, things like 'winner takes all' is a problem with the EC specifically.
The argument is well established except that the author omitted one crucial factor, which is, US became the only super power in the world in recent two decades. At the time the Constitution was drafted, nobody in his/her wildest dream that US would become the dominant power in this solar system. With the existence of outer threaten, branches (or parties) were driven to cooperate for their very own existence. The threaten was removed, so gone the drive.
My argument is also supported by one common phenomena in the business world: it's really rare that a successful company enjoys no political infight. The logic behind is the same: when insiders can obtain more benefit through relative cheap inner fight, they are no longer interested in relatively expensive, difficult and risky company growing strategy.
I don't see why only recent times are indicative of this. America had few outside enemies in e.g. the 1920s, and yet the inner conflicts (Teapot Dome, Steel and Railroad strikes) during those years were nothing like our recent ones.
Maybe I should put it this way: US already reached its peak status, and it's very difficult to even find a way or area to "grow". In 1920s, although US became an economic super power, there were still plenty of room to grow in the area of international political system.
Soviet Russia from 1946-1990 was never a super power, it was in fact weaker in every objective respect than Russia has been the last ten years. Most of the image of it being a super power was propaganda that turned out to be completely false - namely that they had a powerful economy and global military projection ability. Nearly all of their economic output figures were fraudulent. That fraud became apparent with the collapse. This was a country that for 40 years couldn't even keep its grocery stores stocked properly.
On a subjective basis, for about 20 years the USSR seemed powerful, but only when compared militarily to Western Europe, Japan and China which had all been decimated. Compared to the US they were not.
By 1960-1965 West Germany's economy was already bigger than the USSR. By 1965, the US economy (possessing ~50% of all global manufacturing) was at least five times larger than the USSR economy.
From 1950-1990, the USSR's economy was highly isolated, low on innovation and weak, susceptible to constant threats of famine and shock (to say nothing of the things Stalin did domestically). You could see that both in their technology and products. The US post WW2 was a global export monster, highly connected, with a very inventive economy, to go with the global reserve currency. The US achieved by 1970 a median household income of about $45,000 (in 2014 dollars) - something nations are only beginning to catch up to now. Needless to say, the USSR median household income was a small fraction of that.
After WW2 the US had a truly global military position. It had North and South America almost exclusively as its sphere of influence. It had military bases in Japan and Germany. It had a system of global alliances spanning from Canada to the UK to France to Germany to Australia to Japan. The USSR had nothing even remotely like that, their few actual allies were weak and fragile.
You can also argue that the policy of containment, however painful, worked. Even though "Communist" governments at one time or another controlled the majority of the landmass in Euraisa, the broken economic ideology, lack of trade, and heavy industries/military first policies (caused by a defensive stance against Western containment) meant that their economies could never develop in meaningful ways.
The Soviet policy of expendable buffer countries meant that there was little incentive to develop those territories beyond administrative and military control further impacted meaningful economic development.
The U.S. on the other hand tried to improve the general conditions of its vassal/buffer states with broad economic incentives -- namely trade access to the enormous and growing U.S. market, at levels far beyond heavy industry and military cooperation -- all the way down to the much larger consumer market. This policy generated tremendous wealth, which was then turned into better militaries. In the cases where local conditions didn't make that possible, the U.S. simply installed a dictator and funded the local military directly -- almost Soviet style.
I think it's important to not think of the U.S. in isolation, just like Soviet Russia can't be thought of without the USSR, the Eastern-Bloc and other Communist allies, the U.S. has to be thought of in similar terms. The U.S. had/has vanguard allies in the Five-Eye countries (U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand) each able to contribute military units at the strength of U.S. units, "vassal" states like Germany, Japan, Israel and South Korea -- where the U.S. could stage its military at will, and with each offering robust defensive militaries ensuring permanent beachheads, second-tier allies like Iceland, Italy, Philippines, Colombia, etc. that enabled the U.S. to have robust military supply lines.
The USSR had nothing of the order or integration of this global network. A network so large that it spawned tremendous technological innovation in order to manage communication, monitoring and logistics -- pieces of which broke off to form the Internet.
There's no reason to believe that the U.S. and its sphere won't continue to follow this kind of containment policy against states that it doesn't get along with. But economic prosperity is tempting, and China's more permissive environment and massive economic potential can be a tempting ally disgruntled parts of the sphere might turn to, allowing China (who has sufficient political willingness and economic means) to develop into its own super power.
My bet is that the next country that will matter after that will be India.
I have a hard time with a definition of "superpower" that doesn't count a country that can essentially wipe the human species off the planet with a few button presses.
> it was in fact weaker in every objective respect than Russia has been the last ten years.
No, it wasn't. Most critically, in the capacity for projecting soft and hard power beyond its immediate region -- they key factor distinguishing a superpower from a regional power -- the USSR was far beyond where Russia is now. It may be that Russia is a more effectively focused regional power than the USSR was (though, it must be noted, the areas where it exerts substantial pressure largely are places where the USSR exerted direct rule, and the USSR exerted substantial regional influence far beyond those areas, so even that is dubious.)
> Even if we discount the failures of other presidential democracies, though, we should not dismiss the fact that the U.S. Constitution was modeled on a system that collapsed into civil war, and that it is inherently fragile.
Not to mention the US descending into civil war itself (due to irresolvable conflicts over pro- and anti-slavery voting blocks in the federal government).
I think people often forget that the US Constitution explicitly contains mechanisms for its amendment and even wholesale replacement (by constitutional convention), precisely because it was acknowledged that it had to be open to revision as required. The fact that in the modern era constitutional amendments are near impossible and therefore have to be worked around[0], and the unlikeliness of a constitutional convention being called any time soon, is a sign of the dysfunction of the system.
I'd also argue that constitutional originalism is a very new concept, and treating an eighteenth century legal document like a sacred text seems ... rather odd.
>we should not dismiss the fact that the U.S. Constitution was modeled on a system that collapsed into civil war, and that it is inherently fragile.
I don't see this so much as a issue with the modeling of the Constition, but the larger unresolved question of slavery in the United States. They largely "kicked the can" with that question in the Constitution with the "Three-Fifths" rule, but I'd argue that the scene was set for a clash regardless.
I might go a step further and say that the Constitutions wasn't fragile, but because it established a strong Federal system, it set the stage for the conflict to come because the Southern states would now be accountable to Federal law, whereas slavery might have persisted under the Articles.
In my opinion, did it have a hand in the war to come? Yes. Was it the cause? Far from it. The war settled not only slavery, but any lingering questions of the supremacy of that document, and it's never been questioned since.
Agreed. That the Civil War happened does not make the Constitution as a whole fragile. After the Civil War occurred, they removed the three-fifths rule and took away it's major weakness.
>it's never been questioned since
It's often questioned today by asking whether we should follow a "legal document" (instead of the Law of the Land that guarantees our rights) from the 18th century (as _petronius did).
It's not a sign of the dysfunction of a system. It's the system functioning as designed.
In the history of the US, there have been only 27 amendments. Two of them cancel each other out, and 10 were introduced at the beginning, so that's 15 amendments over 226 years. We're 23 years away from the last amendment, only 8 years above the average. It's not "more impossible" now to pass an amendment than it was over the past century. Maybe more difficult, but not near impossible.
It's not even the longest time between amendments in the nation's history. After the Bill of Rights, amendments 11 and 12 were mainly to resolve procedural issues. It then took over 60 years for the next amendments to be passed, all in response to the Civil War, granting the freed slaves freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote.
After that, the amendments were mostly to resolve procedural disputes again, such as presidential term limits, how we elect senators, start of terms, and Congressional salaries. The major amendments after the Civil War all had to do with voting rights: for women, for those aged 18, and for those who couldn't afford a poll tax.
The one time we tried to use the Constitution for social change, it failed miserably. Prohibition resulted in a sharp increase in crime, didn't stop people from consuming alcohol anyway, and ultimately resulted in amendment 21 being ratified to repeal amendment 18 and end prohibition.
None of this points to dysfunction in the system to me.
People don't often forget that the Constitution contains methods for amendment. See: the Marriage Amendment that was floated around in the 90s, and people today saying we'll need a new amendment to limit the power of the super-PACs.
You linked to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. I'm sure if a future Congress sees this as a procedural issue pressing enough to bring up as an amendment, they will. Besides that, there is not much pressing at the moment that requires a Constitutional amendment. That an amendment has not been added in 23 years and one is unlikely to be added is not a sign of dysfunction of the system. It is simply business as usual, no new amendments needed at this time.
> I'm sure if a future Congress sees this as a procedural issue pressing enough to bring up as an amendment
I think you are probably much more optimistic than I am about the current level of legislative deadlock in Congress. From where I'm sitting, I see a body so polarized in its politics that it has trouble passing budgets, much less dealing with modernizing federal election procedure.
The whole point of the Interstate Compact being a compact is that the advocates for it acknowledge that it couldn't be passed via the amendment mechanism because it would never be tabled in Congress -- but they do think they can convince enough states to go for it, which is the other half of the amendment process (although admittedly the mathematics are different, because they just need a majority of Electoral College votes, not 2/3 of states).
> I'd also argue that constitutional originalism is a very new concept
And you'd be wrong -- some of the original authors were already speaking out against originalism in their own lifetimes, which they wouldn't have had to do if the approach hadn't already starting be applied. (And, in fact, some gave preemptive warnings about it even before the Constitution was ratified, so not only was it actually happening from very early one, it was anticipated and a concern from the very beginning.)
Blaming the Constitution for many of our problems is like getting into your new Tesla drunk, disabling the safety features, then blaming it when you plow into a bus full of school children.
Ben Franklin stated it well:
In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.
The fundamental attribute of the Constitution is that it can change with the times. The Constitution has been "corrected" 27 times.
There is nothing wrong with the US that cannot be fixed with what is right with the US. The Constitution is the same. If there are any flaws... then we can propose an Amendment and fix it.
>There is nothing wrong with the US that cannot be fixed with what is right with the US.
Ok. If you really believe in America and the American people, then why shouldn't we do as the article suggests, and call a Constitutional Convention, or use an Amendment to shift to a more parliamentary system that better represents the will of the American people, with less waste and gridlock and greater efficiency and coherence? Or, if the Constitution seems to gridlock us into being unable to change the Constitution in any realistic circumstances, simply ditch it and hold a Convention to draft a new one anyway?
Because the objections I'm hearing to that, in this thread, are that the posters believe what is right with the US is precisely that the Constitution provides for a purportedly-meritocratic oligarchy instead of a real democracy.
So it really comes down to whether you believe "what is right with the US" to be the democratic part, or the oligarchical part.
Because your ideas suck. If you have an actual idea that will stop the gridlock in Congress, I'm all ears. But all you've done is complain and then throw out unreasonable assertions.
Second, I listen to CSpan virtually every day. The number of issues the typical Congressman goes through each day is huge. Whether you recognize it or not, Congress is a policy machine, with dozens of committees discussing many dozens of issues every day, roughly 10 hours a day.
The typical man, woman, or child in this country will NOT be able to keep up with the typical one-minute speeches. I dare you to keep up with the number of issues the House alone attempts to address each day.
Yes, 10-hour days, or even longer. We've got them recorded from early in the morning... with some committees continuing to air live till 8:00pm or later.
Senators and Representatives average 70 hours / week when in DC. When they break and go back to their districts, they are typically meeting with the locals and solidifying their thoughts for the next congressional section.
The first step to recognizing the problem is recognizing the job of Congress. They are doing their job of discussing... but are getting gridlocked on virtually every viewpoint. Congress's role as the center of debate and policy decisions is in-fact working... and working very well in my view.
IMO, what needs to happen is maybe a bit of decentralized debates across the country. Too many of these viewpoints are meeting in Congress, and the debaters "talk past" each other all too often. It almost sounds like Republicans and Democrats start from fundamentally different places on all of these debates.
But I don't know of any laws that would fundamentally solve the issue of "people from different places disagree with each other".
>If you have an actual idea that will stop the gridlock in Congress, I'm all ears.
There was a whole article of ideas. One of the most effective is also the most obvious: the majority vote. Congress is gridlocked because it's too hard to get an up-or-down vote on bills.
From there, we can shift to a mixed-member proportional representation system, which will fix even more of the gridlock - especially pork - by ensuring that votes for local issues and votes for national-scale ideologies go through separate channels.
I didn't say that the Constitution couldn't fail us. It could definitely use some tweaks here and there, like with term limits for all government officials, disambiguation of some of the language, strengthening of states' rights, addressing some more modern concepts like "privacy", etc.
But what I am saying is that our current problems are mostly in spite of the Constitution, not because of it.
Whoa, I wrote my thesis on this. Interesting to see their take on it.
The assertion that the framers didn't understand the flaws inherent in a mixed constitutional system is false; Madison wrote about it, actually. He also predicted the failure of the Constitution, but conceded that it was the best they could do and possibly the best that could have been done at the time - without a negative (essentially judicial review, but under the purview of the senate as well as the judiciary) he essentially foresaw a fracturing. Of course, we got Judicial review a few years later, but that's not in the Constitution and is, as a result, a more fragile power.
I'm glad to see an expert come to the same conclusion that my amateur study of this subject has. The predicate in the first sentence in the article ("The Founders misread history") really rubbed me the wrong way, as I've heard so many people criticize the founders when they haven't even done a tenth of the study and research that the founders had. Perhaps they did misread history, but at least they read history, and lots of it. Hero/idol worship is not a good thing, but claiming the founders were ignorant and backwards is, quite frankly, ignorant and backwards. IMHO, anyone that wants to criticize them should be held to the same high standard that the founders held themselves to, ie, study history, lots of it.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 162 ms ] thread"it is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism" Benjamin Franklin
...this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other. I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution.... It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does... Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best.[0]
He means that the Constitution will continue until no other form of government but despotism is possible, not that it leads to despotism.
Also note that despotism and tyranny are not exactly the same form of government (the main relevant difference is that despotism can be benevolent), and that the distinction would have been more significant in Franklin's time.[1] I think that a more modern phrasing would be something like:
...the Constitution will be administered well for a while, and will last until the country becomes so corrupt that only a despot could maintain order.
[0] http://www.usconstitution.net/franklin.html
[1] http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/politics/what...
edit: formatting
The notion that one style of government is appropriate for all peoples in all places seems absurd. The US constitution was written up by and for people in a particular place and situation and the tensions that existed then look to have escalated to the civil war and these tensions look to remain today. It's interesting to read the anti-federalist papers.
I think the article makes a mistake in not mentioning the 3rd branch - the Judiciary.
I want to take pains to emphasis that this is relative. Contemporary issues and criticisms aside (not to mention those raised in the article), it's a system that has served remarkably well, especially compared to its peers.
I'd argue this has eroded in recent decades due to lack of transparency, which has greatly hindered the third branch, the Judiciary, from being able to act as effectively as it might have otherwise.
I don't think that the American judiciary's problem is that it's hindered in its actions.
Historically, we should have seen more impeachments of federal officials; Congress needs to wield its authority in an exercise of checks and balances on the executive and judicial branches.
The Ethics Committees largely hand-slap only the most gross violations of their members. I see your intent there, but I'd much rather see Congress holding a higher standard of itself.
If you're referring to the overreach of Federal officials, then that gets a bit more sticky. Yes, it should be reined in, but when I see one Congressmen one-upping another on how we need to be "tough" or have "no tolerance" for this or that, I'm little surprised that our police and intelligence agencies act the way they do.
Puritanism dies hard. I'd say the constitution is working perfectly: the government we have is the one we deserve and one that really does reflect what this country, on the whole, wants. People in this country are still overall prudes who want harsh punishments, and that's what we've got. We don't need to fix the constitution, because that won't fix the root cause which is that our society needs fixing.
Can you justify this in a non-self-referential way, ie: via data other than election outcomes?
I have a much greater likelihood of engaging my state and local politicians than I do my federal representatives, and while New Hampshire residents have more direct representation than, say, California residents, it's still dramatically improved over our representation by federal reps.
This of course comes with its own set of pitfalls, for which the federal government has been placed as arbiter, and ceding / being granted power with which to remedy, but in my opinion, term limits seem to be more of a band-aid for a hemorrhaging wound than a a root cause fix.
That is not the system we have: we have a fully-polarized system in which each major party's agenda consists primarily of ensuring that the maximum number of items from the other party's agenda to be enacted will be zero (I say "maximum", because rolling back or repealing any previously-enacted items is also an option). Since they're both quite good at the tactics, the result is inaction even in times when action is needed, to the detriment of the American people.
This is not correct. Sometimes inaction is much better than action. In the case of a corrupt government, inaction is always preferable.
The US constitution is built to create deadlock. See checks/balances. It is this deadlock that has lead to American prosperity. While it is unable to do good, it is also unable to do harm.
The question this essay asks is, how effective is it at those goals? Are there situations where it could all collapse? If yes, are there other systems which are less likely to collapse?
A perfect case in point, the patriot act and the department of homeland security. That represented action taken. Solutions developed. Where they the right actions and the right solutions? Not in the least. Would we be better off without them? Probably.
People who complain about "deadlock" are really complaining Congress isn't implementing their legal and budgetary priorities. But that isn't because there's something wrong; that's because not enough of their countrymen agree.
"When politicians today praise America’s system of checks and balances, they seem to understand it as a self-correcting mechanism: When one branch pushes too hard, the other branches must push back, preserving equilibrium. That understanding actually encourages politicians to overreact, in the belief that they are playing a vital constitutional role. It also encourages complacency, because a system that rights itself requires no painful compromises to preserve."
The problem the author points out with the American constitution is not that we have deadlock, and then we must compromise to get around that deadlock. The problem the author points out is that we can get deadlock, and the system itself has no recovery mechanism for bad actors; deadlock makes it possible for the entire system to collapse. Parliamentary systems have new elections when the existing government cannot reach a deal. That is, the system itself has a failsafe for true deadlock.
- The electoral college was mean to provide a bit of separation between the population and election to the Presidential office. Remember, in the 1790s, direct election of what was envisioned as a powerful post worried many. While it is largely a formality now, the electoral college provided a degree of separation to allow for cooler heads to prevent the spontaneous election of someone unfit. (Personal thought: If Trump somehow gets the nomination, I motion that this be the perfect test of that body's powers.)
- I'm not sure what one can take issue with regarding the amendment process. It's ensured that the document has remained flexible over the years, and was a mechanism created from the outset to fix flaws and limitations known even then. The inclusion of this process could be seen as a nod to the charges Mason and others brought that the new Constitution did not do enough to protect individual liberties. There was not enough broad support at the time to determine what they should be, and the US needed a better system quickly to replace the Articles of Confederation. The amendment process allowed them to move forward and tackle the issue at a later time.
- In Revolutionary times, communications were either in person, or by letter. British soldiers stationed in the cities roamed in public, making meetings to discuss the state of affairs dangerous and difficult. Speaking of anything relating to disobedience to the King and Government in England was an arrestable offensive, a little cause or warrent was needed. So the private home was the preferred location.
Well now imagine that a new directive has been passed, and now a police officer has been assigned to live with you. It's all in the context of providing housing, but he is watching, listening, and will report a disloyal word up to his superiors. It's 18th century persistent surveillance, and the colonists were outraged.
That amendment today seems silly, (it's rarely been directly contested in court) but it's immensely important to establishing a Right to Privacy because of it's intent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Amendment_to_the_United_...
>all suggest that there are things wrong with the American constitution.
Depending on your interpretation of "Wrong", I'd either agree or disagree. But the general point I was trying to make was that I don't find too many flaws with the examples you provided, and with regards to the third amendment, I was trying to provide an example in which even older parts of the document still have a lot of relevance, despite seeming stale at face value.
I didn't mean to insult your intelligence by providing the history lesson though; when I write a reply I do so imagining everyone in the discussion is reading, so while it is probably not new information to you, it might be to someone else. That's the real value in our talk here.
Sorry about that,
Cheers. =)
One other flaw I just put to wtbob below is that the way the document structures elections, the result is a two-party system that simply cannot adequately represent hundreds of millions of people of diverse backgrounds. Given that the document was raised explicitly in response to inadequate representation, that's a problem. Is it the worst problem ever in a constitution? No, but it is still an issue.
Edit: For comparison, here in Australia we have a couple of major parties, a couple of big minor parties, and a scattering of small parties all in government at the moment. Or in Germany, it's entirely normal for major parties to have to band together to form a majority in order to govern - from memory, Merkel's party gets about 25% of the vote, and has to create a coalition with other parties to get the majority required. There is space in these systems for new parties to rise, and the concept of "you're either for us or against us" is nowhere near as prevalent as in the US. These systems have their issues too, but they are more representative of their people due to their flexibility.
Re: Germany, (I live abroad in Germany right now, it's fascinating to watch) The fascinating thing was in this latest election, her party very nearly won an outright majority, meaning it would have required no partners at all. I think the CSU/CDU felt just short of the 51% required. There's never been such a sweeping victory of that scale since the party's inception in the 50's.
The beauty in the Constitution was that it laid out plans for a very well functioning system of government. It ensured changes had to be made with broad support across the nation, and provided for a very strong judiciary. It at once created a strong Federal system that at the same time was highly resistant to tyranny (again, relatively speaking.)
There have been many constitutions written across the world since, but many of them fall along the same lines as the perceptions and wishes espoused by those who misinterpret ours: They are thick documents that attempt to codify the nation's values and morals, as well as establish rules to live by.
The issue with that is that people and nations change, not to mention it is disadvantageous to the weak or minorities. It's why most of the third world has gone through numerous constitutions...
The U.S. Constitution did none of these things. It lays out a system of governance and conflict resolution. It specified powers. There is only one crime, treason, specif iced in the whole document. And most importantly, it laid out a system to make changes that would ensure the broadest support. That's it.
I groan every time some pundit makes the charge that we don't follow the constitution because of some moral outage or perceived cultural mistake being made that the Constitution is perceived to have provided for. It's the modern day bible, held up to be followed but never read.
The Founding Fathers in the Constitution did not require states to allow their citizens to vote for president, much less award all their electoral votes based upon the vote of their citizens.
The current system does not provide some kind of check on the "mobs." There have been 22,991 electoral votes cast since presidential elections became competitive (in 1796), and only 17 have been cast for someone other than the candidate nominated by the elector's own political party. 1796 remains the only instance when the elector might have thought, at the time he voted, that his vote might affect the national outcome. The electors are and will be dedicated party activists of the winning party who meet briefly in mid-December to cast their totally predictable rubberstamped votes in accordance with their pre-announced pledges.
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld state laws guaranteeing faithful voting by presidential electors (because the states have plenary power over presidential electors).
In a winner-take-all state, if Trump is nominated and wins in that state, his party's electors in that state will vote for him.
I do recall direct representation being a cited concern, though I agree that yes, it's original function doesn't seem to have been needed. But I couldn't tell you if that's because it's never been tested, or if it's because of the structure thereof that's prevented a test.
The Electoral College is not crazy; indeed, IMHO what we need is for the state legislatures to appoint their electors. What's crazy is the popular vote.
The House of Representatives were supposed to elect our President, after the Electoral College became deadlocked. That was the design of the Constitution.
The fact of the matter is, the Electoral College is NOT functioning as designed. But whatever, that's how the laws of this country work and we are a country of laws.
The national popular vote winner would receive all of the 270+ electoral votes of the enacting states.
The bill ensures that every vote, in every state, will matter equally in every presidential election, and the candidate with the most votes wins, as in virtually every other election in the country.
Every vote would matter in the state counts and national count.
The bill has passed a total of 33 legislative chambers in 22 rural, small, medium, large, red, blue, and purple states states with 250 electoral votes. The bill has been enacted by 11 jurisdictions possessing 165 electoral votes—61% of the 270 electoral votes necessary to activate it, including 4 small jurisdictions, 3 medium-size states, and 4 big states.
http://www.NationalPopularVote.com
The U.S. Constitution provides: "No state shall, without the consent of Congress,… enter into any agreement or compact with another state…."
Although this language may seem straight forward, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, in 1893 and again in 1978, that the Compacts Clause can "not be read literally." In deciding the 1978 case of U.S. Steel Corporation v. Multistate Tax Commission, the Court wrote: "Read literally, the Compact Clause would require the States to obtain congressional approval before entering into any agreement among themselves, irrespective of form, subject, duration, or interest to the United States.
"The difficulties with such an interpretation were identified by Mr. Justice Field in his opinion for the Court in [the 1893 case] Virginia v. Tennessee. His conclusion [was] that the Clause could not be read literally [and this 1893 conclusion has been] approved in subsequent dicta."
Specifically, the Court's 1893 ruling in Virginia v. Tennessee stated: "Looking at the clause in which the terms 'compact' or 'agreement' appear, it is evident that the prohibition is directed to the formation of any combination tending to the increase of political power in the states, which may encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States."
The state power involved in the National Popular Vote compact is specified in Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 the U.S. Constitution: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors…."
In the 1892 case of McPherson v. Blacker (146 U.S. 1), the Court wrote: "The appointment and mode of appointment of electors belong exclusively to the states under the constitution of the United States"
The National Popular Vote compact would not "encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States" because there is simply no federal power -- much less federal supremacy -- in the area of awarding of electoral votes in the first place.
In the 1978 case of U.S. Steel Corporation v. Multistate Tax Commission, the compact at issue specified that it would come into force when seven or more states enacted it. The compact was silent as to the role of Congress. The compact was submitted to Congress for its consent. After encountering fierce political opposition from various business interests concerned about the more stringent tax audits anticipated under the compact, the compacting states proceeded with the implementation of the compact without congressional consent. U.S. Steel challenged the states' action. In upholding the constitutionality of the implementation of the compact by the states without congressional consent, the U.S. Supreme Court applied the interpretation of the Compacts Clause from its 1893 holding in Virginia v. Tennessee, writing that: "the test is whether the Compact enhances state power quaod [with regard to] the National Government."
The Court also noted that the compact did not "authorize the member states to exercise any powers they could not exercise in its absence."
Not allowing for multipolar politics is a problem with the constitution. Mind you, things like 'winner takes all' is a problem with the EC specifically.
The argument is well established except that the author omitted one crucial factor, which is, US became the only super power in the world in recent two decades. At the time the Constitution was drafted, nobody in his/her wildest dream that US would become the dominant power in this solar system. With the existence of outer threaten, branches (or parties) were driven to cooperate for their very own existence. The threaten was removed, so gone the drive.
My argument is also supported by one common phenomena in the business world: it's really rare that a successful company enjoys no political infight. The logic behind is the same: when insiders can obtain more benefit through relative cheap inner fight, they are no longer interested in relatively expensive, difficult and risky company growing strategy.
Is there anything missing/wrong in my logic?
Soviet Russia from 1946-1990 was never a super power, it was in fact weaker in every objective respect than Russia has been the last ten years. Most of the image of it being a super power was propaganda that turned out to be completely false - namely that they had a powerful economy and global military projection ability. Nearly all of their economic output figures were fraudulent. That fraud became apparent with the collapse. This was a country that for 40 years couldn't even keep its grocery stores stocked properly.
On a subjective basis, for about 20 years the USSR seemed powerful, but only when compared militarily to Western Europe, Japan and China which had all been decimated. Compared to the US they were not.
By 1960-1965 West Germany's economy was already bigger than the USSR. By 1965, the US economy (possessing ~50% of all global manufacturing) was at least five times larger than the USSR economy.
From 1950-1990, the USSR's economy was highly isolated, low on innovation and weak, susceptible to constant threats of famine and shock (to say nothing of the things Stalin did domestically). You could see that both in their technology and products. The US post WW2 was a global export monster, highly connected, with a very inventive economy, to go with the global reserve currency. The US achieved by 1970 a median household income of about $45,000 (in 2014 dollars) - something nations are only beginning to catch up to now. Needless to say, the USSR median household income was a small fraction of that.
After WW2 the US had a truly global military position. It had North and South America almost exclusively as its sphere of influence. It had military bases in Japan and Germany. It had a system of global alliances spanning from Canada to the UK to France to Germany to Australia to Japan. The USSR had nothing even remotely like that, their few actual allies were weak and fragile.
The Soviet policy of expendable buffer countries meant that there was little incentive to develop those territories beyond administrative and military control further impacted meaningful economic development.
The U.S. on the other hand tried to improve the general conditions of its vassal/buffer states with broad economic incentives -- namely trade access to the enormous and growing U.S. market, at levels far beyond heavy industry and military cooperation -- all the way down to the much larger consumer market. This policy generated tremendous wealth, which was then turned into better militaries. In the cases where local conditions didn't make that possible, the U.S. simply installed a dictator and funded the local military directly -- almost Soviet style.
I think it's important to not think of the U.S. in isolation, just like Soviet Russia can't be thought of without the USSR, the Eastern-Bloc and other Communist allies, the U.S. has to be thought of in similar terms. The U.S. had/has vanguard allies in the Five-Eye countries (U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand) each able to contribute military units at the strength of U.S. units, "vassal" states like Germany, Japan, Israel and South Korea -- where the U.S. could stage its military at will, and with each offering robust defensive militaries ensuring permanent beachheads, second-tier allies like Iceland, Italy, Philippines, Colombia, etc. that enabled the U.S. to have robust military supply lines.
The USSR had nothing of the order or integration of this global network. A network so large that it spawned tremendous technological innovation in order to manage communication, monitoring and logistics -- pieces of which broke off to form the Internet.
There's no reason to believe that the U.S. and its sphere won't continue to follow this kind of containment policy against states that it doesn't get along with. But economic prosperity is tempting, and China's more permissive environment and massive economic potential can be a tempting ally disgruntled parts of the sphere might turn to, allowing China (who has sufficient political willingness and economic means) to develop into its own super power.
My bet is that the next country that will matter after that will be India.
No, it wasn't. Most critically, in the capacity for projecting soft and hard power beyond its immediate region -- they key factor distinguishing a superpower from a regional power -- the USSR was far beyond where Russia is now. It may be that Russia is a more effectively focused regional power than the USSR was (though, it must be noted, the areas where it exerts substantial pressure largely are places where the USSR exerted direct rule, and the USSR exerted substantial regional influence far beyond those areas, so even that is dubious.)
Here's all you need to know about the Constitution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngpsJKQR_ZE
Not to mention the US descending into civil war itself (due to irresolvable conflicts over pro- and anti-slavery voting blocks in the federal government).
I think people often forget that the US Constitution explicitly contains mechanisms for its amendment and even wholesale replacement (by constitutional convention), precisely because it was acknowledged that it had to be open to revision as required. The fact that in the modern era constitutional amendments are near impossible and therefore have to be worked around[0], and the unlikeliness of a constitutional convention being called any time soon, is a sign of the dysfunction of the system.
I'd also argue that constitutional originalism is a very new concept, and treating an eighteenth century legal document like a sacred text seems ... rather odd.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
I don't see this so much as a issue with the modeling of the Constition, but the larger unresolved question of slavery in the United States. They largely "kicked the can" with that question in the Constitution with the "Three-Fifths" rule, but I'd argue that the scene was set for a clash regardless.
I might go a step further and say that the Constitutions wasn't fragile, but because it established a strong Federal system, it set the stage for the conflict to come because the Southern states would now be accountable to Federal law, whereas slavery might have persisted under the Articles.
In my opinion, did it have a hand in the war to come? Yes. Was it the cause? Far from it. The war settled not only slavery, but any lingering questions of the supremacy of that document, and it's never been questioned since.
>it's never been questioned since
It's often questioned today by asking whether we should follow a "legal document" (instead of the Law of the Land that guarantees our rights) from the 18th century (as _petronius did).
One can argue that with the passage of the 18th Amendment, the amendment process became a parody of itself.
The straw that broke the house of cards built to accommodate slavery was Manifest Destiny. You can't have both.
In the history of the US, there have been only 27 amendments. Two of them cancel each other out, and 10 were introduced at the beginning, so that's 15 amendments over 226 years. We're 23 years away from the last amendment, only 8 years above the average. It's not "more impossible" now to pass an amendment than it was over the past century. Maybe more difficult, but not near impossible.
It's not even the longest time between amendments in the nation's history. After the Bill of Rights, amendments 11 and 12 were mainly to resolve procedural issues. It then took over 60 years for the next amendments to be passed, all in response to the Civil War, granting the freed slaves freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote.
After that, the amendments were mostly to resolve procedural disputes again, such as presidential term limits, how we elect senators, start of terms, and Congressional salaries. The major amendments after the Civil War all had to do with voting rights: for women, for those aged 18, and for those who couldn't afford a poll tax.
The one time we tried to use the Constitution for social change, it failed miserably. Prohibition resulted in a sharp increase in crime, didn't stop people from consuming alcohol anyway, and ultimately resulted in amendment 21 being ratified to repeal amendment 18 and end prohibition.
None of this points to dysfunction in the system to me.
People don't often forget that the Constitution contains methods for amendment. See: the Marriage Amendment that was floated around in the 90s, and people today saying we'll need a new amendment to limit the power of the super-PACs.
You linked to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. I'm sure if a future Congress sees this as a procedural issue pressing enough to bring up as an amendment, they will. Besides that, there is not much pressing at the moment that requires a Constitutional amendment. That an amendment has not been added in 23 years and one is unlikely to be added is not a sign of dysfunction of the system. It is simply business as usual, no new amendments needed at this time.
I think you are probably much more optimistic than I am about the current level of legislative deadlock in Congress. From where I'm sitting, I see a body so polarized in its politics that it has trouble passing budgets, much less dealing with modernizing federal election procedure.
The whole point of the Interstate Compact being a compact is that the advocates for it acknowledge that it couldn't be passed via the amendment mechanism because it would never be tabled in Congress -- but they do think they can convince enough states to go for it, which is the other half of the amendment process (although admittedly the mathematics are different, because they just need a majority of Electoral College votes, not 2/3 of states).
And you'd be wrong -- some of the original authors were already speaking out against originalism in their own lifetimes, which they wouldn't have had to do if the approach hadn't already starting be applied. (And, in fact, some gave preemptive warnings about it even before the Constitution was ratified, so not only was it actually happening from very early one, it was anticipated and a concern from the very beginning.)
Ben Franklin stated it well:
In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.
That surely doesn't sound like you're talking about a god /s.
There is nothing wrong with the US that cannot be fixed with what is right with the US. The Constitution is the same. If there are any flaws... then we can propose an Amendment and fix it.
I really love that quote. (Bill Clinton, right?)
> There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America
Ok. If you really believe in America and the American people, then why shouldn't we do as the article suggests, and call a Constitutional Convention, or use an Amendment to shift to a more parliamentary system that better represents the will of the American people, with less waste and gridlock and greater efficiency and coherence? Or, if the Constitution seems to gridlock us into being unable to change the Constitution in any realistic circumstances, simply ditch it and hold a Convention to draft a new one anyway?
Because the objections I'm hearing to that, in this thread, are that the posters believe what is right with the US is precisely that the Constitution provides for a purportedly-meritocratic oligarchy instead of a real democracy.
So it really comes down to whether you believe "what is right with the US" to be the democratic part, or the oligarchical part.
Second, I listen to CSpan virtually every day. The number of issues the typical Congressman goes through each day is huge. Whether you recognize it or not, Congress is a policy machine, with dozens of committees discussing many dozens of issues every day, roughly 10 hours a day.
The typical man, woman, or child in this country will NOT be able to keep up with the typical one-minute speeches. I dare you to keep up with the number of issues the House alone attempts to address each day.
http://www.c-span.org/search/?searchtype=All&query=one+minut...
Yes, 10-hour days, or even longer. We've got them recorded from early in the morning... with some committees continuing to air live till 8:00pm or later.
Senators and Representatives average 70 hours / week when in DC. When they break and go back to their districts, they are typically meeting with the locals and solidifying their thoughts for the next congressional section.
The first step to recognizing the problem is recognizing the job of Congress. They are doing their job of discussing... but are getting gridlocked on virtually every viewpoint. Congress's role as the center of debate and policy decisions is in-fact working... and working very well in my view.
IMO, what needs to happen is maybe a bit of decentralized debates across the country. Too many of these viewpoints are meeting in Congress, and the debaters "talk past" each other all too often. It almost sounds like Republicans and Democrats start from fundamentally different places on all of these debates.
But I don't know of any laws that would fundamentally solve the issue of "people from different places disagree with each other".
There was a whole article of ideas. One of the most effective is also the most obvious: the majority vote. Congress is gridlocked because it's too hard to get an up-or-down vote on bills.
From there, we can shift to a mixed-member proportional representation system, which will fix even more of the gridlock - especially pork - by ensuring that votes for local issues and votes for national-scale ideologies go through separate channels.
But what I am saying is that our current problems are mostly in spite of the Constitution, not because of it.
See what I did there? When we twist each other's words and don't even try to understand each other, a medium such as this becomes less than useless.
The assertion that the framers didn't understand the flaws inherent in a mixed constitutional system is false; Madison wrote about it, actually. He also predicted the failure of the Constitution, but conceded that it was the best they could do and possibly the best that could have been done at the time - without a negative (essentially judicial review, but under the purview of the senate as well as the judiciary) he essentially foresaw a fracturing. Of course, we got Judicial review a few years later, but that's not in the Constitution and is, as a result, a more fragile power.