We, the People?
The Constitution of the United States is to most Americans the nation’s Sacred Scripture, promulgated by inspired Founding Fathers with an unprecedented political wisdom that has guided “the greatest nation on earth” to the present day. Everyone talks about it, praises it, quotes or misquotes phrases from it as many do the Bible, but very few Americans have ever read it, and some of those who have are surprised to discover, through its sometimes opaque legalisms, that the Constitution, in the twenty-first century, is a profoundly undemocratic document.
The recent and continuing debacle about the debt ceiling and deficits is just the sort of thing the makers of our Constitution would champion--not the arrogance or childish behavior exhibited, but the right of a few to say No! in thunder and frustrate the will of the majority. The Constitution was designed by a conservative élite to insure that change in the status quo would be almost impossible. The much-praised checks and balances, a presidential, rather than a parliamentary system, the method of electing the president by an Electoral College and senators by state legislatures, and even the bicameral legislature itself insured that the powerful and well-placed would prevail over an untrustworthy mob in the majority. At least one branch of the government, it was hoped, could be counted upon to block any proposed significant change. The wealthy and the well-born were the only minority the Constitution was meant to protect.
Change still can be stymied by extreme partisanship in the House, a single senator, or a five-to-four decision of the Supreme Court, even in the case of a measure proposed by a popular president and endorsed by 80% of the people. Fundamental change in the United States has required political or economic disaster, on the scale of 1860 or 1930, when the nation became embroiled in a cataclysmic Civil War and a Great Depression, and even then the changes brought about were reversed partially and piecemeal in ensuing decades by the forces of reaction. Because of our much-heralded Constitution, the United States cannot without extraordinary effort and persistence change policies that are unjust, unfair, destructive, or defy common sense.
The presidential election of 2008 was won by the candidate who advocated change and whose motto was, “Yes, we can!” As a charismatic personality he inspired enthusiasm, but he must have known, as a professor of constitutional law, that any major change would be unlikely, even with majorities in the legislature. The one monumental piece of legislation enacted during the Obama administration to date, health care expanded to include most Americans, was achieved at great political cost and considerable compromise, and it is currently being nibbled away at by congress, attacked by governors and state legislatures, questioned by the courts on constitutional grounds, and it faces the strong possibility of being overturned by a politicized Supreme Court. What is perceived by progressives as a personal weakness of the president, an unwillingness to do battle with the forces of reaction, is more likely to be his understanding that the Constitution is clearly on the side of those who say, “No, you can’t!”
Most would argue that any change in American governance--say, to a parliamentary system--is sheer fantasy. The Constitutional Convention itself, however, was something of a coup d’état, there having been no legal provision for replacing the Articles of Confederation. It has become increasingly difficult for strict constructionists and those on the far right who insist on the original intent of the Constitution to argue that a document meant to unite thirteen countries or states in a provincial backwater along the Atlantic coast of North America in 1787 can be applied literally to a superpower in the twenty-first century, one that is politically, economically, and militarily dominant across the globe. And maybe a national cataclysm on a scale that enabled the reforms of a Lincoln or an F.D.R. will not be required. Protracted stalemates, the inability of political leaders to act even in obvious emergencies, the growing awareness that our elaborate tax code, together with enormous “campaign contributions” by lobbyists, amount to grand-scale, legalized corruption, and the increasing public frustration and anger over the shenanigans in Washington may well do the trick.