As the end of the world’s longest political campaign nears, it is time for us to take stock and ask ourselves why we continue to wallow in our extended misery. Not only do we take far longer than any other nation to pick our leadership, we spend ungodly amounts of money in the process. Since our leadership doesn’t bother to question the wisdom of a process in which they are totally invested, it is up to the rest of us to question our sanity.
I suspect that our presidential election process must have been the creation of Rube Goldberg. I cannot imagine anyone else who could have dreamed up something this bizarre, something that would try the patience of a three-toed sloth. Even the candidates I want to vote for are tiresome by now, much less the ones I cannot stand. If it is one of Rube’s jokes, the joke is on us.
There is something seriously wrong with our entire federal political system. The campaigns are endless, the amounts spent are staggering, the results achieved are akin to stagnation mixed with invective, and the standard of governance achieved might have been effective for student government during my senior year in high school, but I doubt it. In short, nothing is working well.
We usually spend our time blaming the politicians. As a sport, politician bashing is sometimes fun, but mostly it is an excuse to vent our disgust at the system in an unprofitable manner. In fact, I have come to believe that politician bashing is keeping us from focusing on the real problem – the obsolescence of our system of government. I suspect that a careful analysis would show that the system our founders installed is leaking at the seams and that no matter whom we elect we will get substandard governance as a result.
Our Constitution was a marvel of its time. When it was adopted, it was a serious attempt to create something more than rule by royalty. It was not an attempt to create a democracy, no matter what we may say about our country and our beliefs. It was an attempt by our founders – members of the colonial elite – to create a form of representative government that would enshrine that elite in power. For its time, it was daring, novel and far more democratic than anything else then in existence. While it was not more democratic than some of the early Greek city states, for its time it was truly revolutionary.
Anyone who thinks we were creating a democracy when adopting our Constitution has read neither its text nor the Federalist Papers. Our founders created a republic – a form of representative government that they felt fit the needs of their times. They wanted more democracy than the King provided, but wished to also accommodate a basic distrust of the general populace. Given the condition of roads and the means of communication then available to our founders, they wrought something magnificent. They created something that we have all come to revere even though it harbors many anti-democratic ideas.
And in that very reverence are the seeds of our current despair. We continue to enshrine our Constitution in our hearts and minds and don’t bother to re-examine its dictates in the light of today’s society. The system it created has been broken for several decades and no longer serves us well. As much as I would like to blame the Republicans for all of the stalemates in Congress, the truth is that it is the system that creates a fertile environment for stalemate no matter who is in charge or the size of their majority. Our vaunted system of checks and balances means that nothing can be accomplished in a timely manner and, all too often, means that nothing can be accomplished at all.
Our founders wanted to widen access to government but they had no intention of throwing it open to all and sundry. Again, read the Federalist Papers if this statement seems heretical to you, and then consider the founders in their time and place. For their time and place, they were revolutionaries. But their dreams, judged by today’s standards, are no longer visionary but, instead, are representative of a far gone past. I strongly suspect that if Thomas Jefferson were alive today as a fully cognizant man of this century, he would be foremost among those arguing for a new constitutional convention.
Ironically, the country from which we splintered when the Constitution was adopted has a far more modern system of government than we. It is still a representative government, but it operates, as a system, with far more effectiveness and efficiency. Is it the paragon of governmental structures? Somehow I doubt that, but we should be reviewing our own form of government as a predecessor to the parliamentary form currently prevalent in Europe and Canada, and be designing a new system that fits our size and our times.
Having said this, I have a great love for our Constitution. But the love that we all share for this document is precisely the reason why we are unable to see that it no longer functions effectively. We have deified the document to the point where we are unable to see its flaws. With all due respect, it has served us well, but the time to give it a rest is upon us.
A call for a national constitutional convention will be seen as many as a call for chaos. Nothing could be further from the truth to my way of thinking. Until a new constitution is ratified, we still enjoy the form of government that has served us these many years. If the members of a new constitutional convention are unable to agree, at least they will focus us upon the issues that can and should be debated until a consensus can be reached. In any event, since when have we been afraid of debate in this country? Instead of debating endlessly as our Congressional structure demands, shouldn’t we decide to engage in a debate that might actually produce a constructive outcome?
I suspect the biggest problem with our present Constitution lies in the structure of the legislative branch of government. Our current structure is a recipe for stalemate. But the institution of the Electoral College is equally suspect, since it is the most singularly anti-democratic institution left enshrined in our Constitution. Think about it. The founders didn’t truly trust the average voter, so they created an Electoral College of the elite to make certain that not just any Tom, Dick or Harry became President. In doing so, they ensured that we got a George as President – one as equally demented, ineffective and as sorry an excuse as a sovereign as the one from whom we escaped all those many years ago during our pre-Constitutional revolution.
I don’t have a recipe for doing it right next time. I have some ideas, but whatever we choose should be the result of able minded men and women of all colors coming together in a national constitutional convention to find the way forward. Everything should be open to review – even the Bill of Rights which, as you may well recall, was not part of the original Constitution in the first place. We absolutely need a bill of rights in a new constitution, but its contents should be carefully reviewed in light of the times in which we live, our population density and the state of our communications.
In short, let’s venerate our Constitution as it deserves, but not let it blind us to our present needs. The time has come to give the old dear a rest and let it take its rightful place in history. We should never forget what it has meant to us, but it is time to move on to something for our times. It is past time to rekindle the spirit of our founders and to revisit the schemes and means of government. Two Georges are too many.
