The Talking Dog has conducted an interview with Larry Sabato of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and of “Crystal Ball” fame. The interview has been posted at The Moderate Voice and I commend it to your attention. Much of the interview deals with material in Dr. Sabato’s new book, “A More Perfect Constitution: 23 Proposals to Revitalize our Constitution and Make America a Fairer Country”.
I agree broadly with the objectives of Dr. Sabato’s proposals but as a matter of practicality I don’t think that amending the Constitution is the most doable way of achieving them. Changes of the breadth and scope that Dr. Sabato is suggesting couldn’t be accomplished with a single amendment, possibly not even with a group of amendments. A constitutional convention would be required and I think that would be opening Pandora’s box.
Dr. Sabato’s proposals include expanding the sizes of the Senate and the House and term limits for federal judges.
Much of what Dr. Sabato suggests could be achieved by another means without amending the Constitution by splitting the largest states e.g. California, New York, Texas, Florida, and so on into three or more pieces each, each new state having two senators of its own and allocating the current caucus in the House of Representatives for each state commensurate with the populations of each new state.
Increasing the size of the House of Representatives, too, could be achieved without Constitutional amendment by changing the rules for allocation as has been done several times in the country’s history.
Note, particularly, this observation of Dr. Sabato’s:
It may well be that people are ready for a detailed election methodology amendment to the Constitution, so that people can once again have confidence in the results of our elections. The Constitution should be a living, evolving document, just as the Founders and Framers intended. They could not have foreseen mass democracy, or the kind of situation that arose in 2000. They would have expected us to correct problems either with legislation or by means of a Constitutional amendment. We tried legislation and some do not believe it is adequate. If we have a constitutional convention, the delegates will decide whether this subject is important enough to include in new constitution, and then 38 states will have to agree that it is important enough, too.
I don’t have any particular horror of amending the Constitution but I can’t say I relish the idea of the Constitution being rewritten by the current crop of politicians. I don’t see either Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as the new James Madison or Sen. Robert Byrd as the new George Mason.
I think one of the beauties of the Consitution is that it is largely concerns itself with a structure to determine where and how arguments are resolved. It generally avoids policy preferences. As he concerns himself with issues of structure, like judicial term limits, I think Sabato is on the right track. Though if gerrymandering were such a popular issue, one would think more states would have already addressed it.
Sabato is off-key when promoting his own policy preference of quitting unpopular wars. He may want to have abandoned Vietnam and Iraq earlier, but should the North have given up on the Civil War as well? And if the Iraq conflict is so unpopular, how come the leading opposition candidates aren’t proposing to leave any time soon? Perhaps its not black and white and perhaps the Constitution shouldn’t commit itself too strongly to future wars and nation-building exercises with unknowable risks.
PD, I do believee that your comment is just about perfect. (I say that with sincerity, it’s really a great comment.)
I don’t have any particular horror of amending the Constitution but I can’t say I relish the idea of the Constitution being rewritten by the current crop of politicians. I don’t see either Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as the new James Madison or Sen. Robert Byrd as the new George Mason.
As a Republican (God help me), I have to say that substituting Denny Hastert, Mitch McConnell and Trent Lott into the second quoted sentence gives me the willies, too. For one thing, the R’s seem to keep coming back to flag burning as being an important enough issue that it needs to be encoded into the Consitution. That alone should be grounds enough to keep them far away from a Constitutional Convention.
Every American that loves their country and their Constitution should support the movement to get the nation’s first Article V convention that we have a constitutional right to have, and that Congress has refused to give us; learn more at http://www.foavc.org and become a member!!!!