So here's something to think about.
We think of the Founders as men of the people, who wanted the people to all have an equal say in the running of government. Freedom! Democracy! Everyone has a vote and a voice!
That's a nice fiction. And that's all it is — a fiction.
They were landed European white men. This means they were, at minimum, minor gentry in the British system. Hereditary landowners, whose land was a fiefdom.
(Yes, even the dudes in the North.)
And I’m not just talking about the slavery problem. Yes, it was a big damn problem, and its smutch is all over our Constitution (three-fifths rule, anyone?) but that’s not the only problem that this caused.
As landed European white men, they had a particular cultural worldview, and it was this:
They believed that only landed European white men would ever be the ones to run for office in the new nation they'd built.
Only. Landed. European. White. Men.
They also had that thing which so many fantasy fiction novels like to paint into their noble and gentle characters: noblesse oblige. That is, the obligation of the "greater" to provide for, supervise, and oversee the welfare of the "lesser."
Their system was based on the assumption that, since landed European white men would be running the country, their noble/gentle sensibilities would thus guide them to always do the right thing for the entire country. And thus, we didn't need pesky things like written codes of ethics, or term limits on judges, or anything like that. Heaven forbid! They knew what the right thing to do was, and so, of course their arguments would be about how to accomplish it. And of course their descendants would understand this, because of course their descendants would also be landed European white men, who held the same sensibilities they did. And so of course the nation would be fine under the system they’d created.
Yeah, no. Despite all of their forward thinking, they missed this important fact: culture changes. They were changing the culture themselves, although they didn’t realize it. The cultural sensibilities of the landed European white man — and indeed, the landed European white man itself! — were not long for this world, culturally, but they didn’t realize that, and so they did not prepare the nation for that change. They made the mistake which Stephen King identifies as one belonging to bank presidents and high-school students: what’s now, is forever.
Hell, the first three American Presidential elections were run on the assumption that the winner would be President and the runner-up would be Vice President! Because of course those two would get along with each other even after competing for the same office, because the sensibilities of the noble/gentle landed European white man would override any animosity they might feel for one another. They caught wise to this not being a great idea in practice after the election of 1800, and enacted the 12th Amendment, which said "President and Vice President are on one ticket together from now on."
But if you look at the founding documents of the United States, you begin to see that landed-gentry assumption peeking out all over the place. The assumption was that the "greater" would rule over the "lesser" and that their noble outlook would prevent the shitshows we've seen since at least 2016, is everywhere. Washington, naively, believed that we needed to avoid partisanship and political parties entirely - and we see how well that worked out, right? (It didn't.)
Our current system is still structured around the belief that noblesse oblige is what guides the hands of the people who are in our federal offices, legislatures, and judgeships, and the belief that the norms of noblesse oblige will hold without legal, written standards and requirements spelling out what those norms require of those people. And we’ve seen what happens when the norms are just assumed. We get 2016. We get four years of a malevolent bully running the country into the ground.
This system needs an overhaul. Badly.
I do not think the time is right for a Second Constitutional Convention, because of how partisan this nation has become. But I will say that it was naive, over-optimistic, and downright foolhardy of the Founders to think that the cultural sensibilities of landed European white men would keep this nation together in times of pressure and crisis. And we need to be aware of this, because it's a big damn problem, folks.
