The events in Washington over the last weeks and months and
the complete failure of the Supercommittee to reach any agreement have
demonstrated to most Americans that our Congress no longer works. In a recent poll conducted by CBS News/New
York Times 91% of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is doing its job. So, is it time to stop complaining? Do we need something new? Do we need a new constitution? Is it time for a new constitutional
convention to draw up a plan of government better suited to the 21
st
century and the political, social, economic, environmental, and international
problems we face today? Is it time to give up on Congress fixing itself? Is it time to re-imagine how a democracy
should and can work in the 21
st century? I think so.
Every country comes to a moment when the citizens must
decide whether the form of government they have is working the way it needs to
work. If not, they must decide whether
they need to make a change and whether that change can be simple adjustments to
the current form of government or whether major change is needed and they need
to scrap what they have and start over.
I believe the time to start over with a totally new constitution is
now. We’ve done it before.
Our current constitution was written in 1787 by a group of
practical men attempting to address governmental problems of their time caused
by the limitations of the constitution of that time, the Articles of
Confederation, which clearly was not working.
The problems the nation faced were many and growing. Many were economic. Although some areas of the country were
prospering, much of the country was enduring a depression. The national government, which had borrowed
heavily to finance a war, was struggling to find a way to pay off its debts
and, indeed, even to find the money to pay what it owed to its soldiers. The states were having difficulty paying
their own debts. Many Americans felt
that the taxes they were required to pay were unfair. Many Americans were in danger of losing their
homes and farms because they could not pay their debts. Congress couldn’t raise the necessary funds
to finance its operations and pay the country’s debts. Congressional procedures made it nearly
impossible to get anything done. A few
delegates could block almost any legislation.
The imbalance of power between the federal government and states made
the management of interstate commerce and a national economy almost
impossible. The problems were much like
those we face today.
Many of the politically astute at the time came to the
conclusion that the country’s constitution was not working. They decided that tinkering with the existing
constitution would not be enough. They
decided to do the brave thing even at the risk of being called traitors. They decided to write a new constitution. Meeting from May to September in 1787, often
in sweltering heat, fifty-five men constructed a new constitution for our
nation, the one we have now. They then
sold the country on the wisdom of adopting their new constitution. It is testimony to their accomplishment that
the basic structure of the government they designed has endured to this day,
although substantially altered, changed in ways they could not have imagined
and indeed, probably would not have liked.
Although the document they produced is revered and, as I said, was a
remarkable achievement, it is an 18th century document based upon 18th
century thinking about governments and governing.
We must devise a new form of government better suited to the
realities of our time. We must devise a
form of government that works. We must
design a form of government where, unlike today, it is possible to get things
done in Washington.
There are many problems with our existing form of government
that make it difficult and often nearly impossible to get anything done. For any piece of legislation to get passed,
it must be approved by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives and signed
into law by the President. It then must
withstand any constitutional challenge before the Supreme Court.
Today, Senators are elected statewide and serve the
interests of the voters in their states.
Representatives are elected in districts and serve the narrow interests
of voters in their district. Increasingly
those districts are gerrymandered to be safe for the incumbent and party. Whoever wins the party primary wins the
general election, so candidates take whatever extreme policy positions are
likely to appeal to the ideology of the dominate faction in the district. Once elected, they have no incentive to
compromise or work across party lines for the good of the nation and, in fact,
are punished if they do so.
The President is elected nation-wide, not by a majority of
the popular vote, but by a majority in an arcane electoral college which
allocates votes to states according to their number of Senators and
Representatives. Consequently, the
President doesn’t serve the interest of the nation as a whole but rather the
interests of the voters in states with the most electoral votes, particularly
in swing states with voters who can be persuaded to switch parties from one
presidential election to the next. The
President knows it is politically safe for him to ignore the interests of small
states and states that are known to be safe for his party.
Members of the Supreme Court are appointed by the President
and confirmed by the Senate often because they share the President’s and
majority party’s ideological and/or policy preferences. Like the President, Supreme Court justices
are supposed to serve the national interest but often they serve the
ideological/policy preferences of a President and Senate that has long vanished
from the national stage. In recent years, members of the Supreme Court have
abandoned any pretext of impartially in favor of promoting a particular
ideology and/or partisan interest. Some
have even endorsed a particular ideological point-of-view by participating in
organizations and attending meetings of groups devoted to gaining control of
government to advance a narrow view of the role of government.
To make matters even more complicated, the President,
Senators and Representatives serve different terms. Representatives must stand for election every
two years. Every six years 1/3rd of
Senators must face the voters and every four years we vote for a
President. Supreme Court justices serve
for life. Senators, Representatives, the
President and members of the court thus operate on different time horizons.
Political campaigns at all levels have become increasing
expensive. Consequently, candidates
spend a considerable amount of time and effort simply raising a campaign war
chest. Fund raising doesn’t end with the
election. In fact, today Presidents,
Senators and Congressman spend more time raising money for their next campaign
than they do legislating. Rich
individuals and large corporations take advantage of this ongoing, desperate
search for campaign funds to push their own narrow policy interests. The corrupting force of money for influence
is stronger than ever.
Often the party that controls the House is different from
the party that controls the Senate. Even
when the House and Senate are controlled by the same party, the president may
be from a different party. There may be and
often are sharp ideological differences and policy preferences between the two
branches themselves and between the Congress and the president because of the
way members of Congress and the president are elected and the frequency with
which they must stand for reelection.
Additionally, the rules of order in the two houses of
Congress differ so that the very path a bill has to negotiate to become law is
quite different. For example, Senate
rules concerning cutting off debate/filibuster, make it impossible to get
controversial legislation passed without a super-majority of 60 members voting
in the affirmative.
Finally, since the justices on any particular sitting
Supreme Court have been appointed by different presidents and confirmed by
different Senates over what may be decades, the court itself may be severely
split ideologically making unanimous rulings difficult, if not impossible. Consequently, laws may be upheld or declared
unconstitutional by the thinnest majority.
Additionally, at any time the court may be and often is significantly
out of step with the prevailing political mood and wishes of the president,
Congress and American people.
Beyond these institutional barriers there are the barriers
caused by individual and collective competing interests of a pluralistic and
ever more fragmented society. For all of
the people who at any given time are suffering because of the way things are
and hoping for change, there are a smaller but often richer and more powerful
group who are prospering from the way things are and are determined to see that
no change occurs. The closer advocates
of change get to making change happen the more determined the opposition
becomes. And, since change always
involves a certain amount of the unknown which most of us find frightening,
those opposed to change usually have an easier time convincing us to do
nothing. They have the fear of the
unknown on their side. To get things done advocates of change have to overcome
all the incentives built into the system to do nothing. Whenever anyone
proposes a major change in public policy, they immediately encounter resistance
from those who are threatened by and/are frightened by the change. Momentum starts building to oppose change and
it gains strength like a ball rolling down a hill gather anti-change speed as
it goes.
Today the challenge of legislative accomplishment looms
larger than ever. Factions
proliferate. The corrupting force of
money for influence is stronger than ever.
The manipulation of the media is pervasive and more sophisticated. The use of known psychology of influence is
more problematic. Propaganda artfully
disguised as truth is more widespread.
All sides on every issue use these weapons of persuasion resulting in
every side persuading just enough of those in the middle to keep the other side
from winning. No side wins and we all
lose. We cannot go forward, not because
we have no forward path, but because we have multitudes of paths all blocked by
one interest or another. We are too
often at a stalemate and our form of government is largely to blame.
Congress can work. In
my newest book, Getting Things Done in Washington,
I tell the story of men and women who achieve great legislative victories and changed
our country forever and for the better. I
extract lessons we can learn from their accomplishments, lessons that we must learn
if we are to get anything done under the present system. However, we may need to do more. We need to start talking about major change.
The debate we should be having isn’t about debt, spending,
deficits, regulations or even jobs. It
should be about our Constitution.
Washington isn’t broken. Our
Constitution is broken. More precisely,
our Constitution has outlived its ability to function. We’re stuck with an eighteenth century form
of government in the 21st century. We need a new form of government.
I’m proposing that we begin a national discussion about what form our new
government might take. The time to begin
re-imaging America is now. It is time to consider a change or many changes,
some major and some minor.
Here are a few of the changes in our form of government we
might consider.
- We might change the length of terms of office for President
and Congress with a provision that no one could serve more than one term and
that the President and any member of Congress could be required to face a
recall election upon the petition of a certain percentage of eligible voters. For example, why not have the President serve
one 8 year term, Senators one 12 year term and Representatives one 4 year term? Maybe if those who ran for office could not
run for the same office again that they wouldn’t have to spend so much time
raising money for their next campaign.
They could folks on getting things done and solving the nation’s
problems. Would longer terms hurt or
help?
- We might scrap the presidential form of government
altogether in favor of a parliamentarian system with prime minister. Under such a system, the ruling party would
have to either obtain the support of a majority of Americans or build a ruling
coalition with other parties. Would a
parliamentarian system be better than the one we have?
- We might outlaw gerrymandering by requiring that
Congressional districts adhere to existing local government boundaries so that
counties, parishes and cities could not be split. Would it help if there were no “safe” seats?
- Once again we might require members of the Senate to
actually take to the floor of the Senate to mount a filibuster and place a time
limit of the maximum length of a filibuster and/or provide for a sequence of
votes to end a filibuster, each requiring fewer votes than the previous. Would this cut down on the use of the filibuster
in the Senate? Would more get done?
- We might require members of the House and Senate to reside
full time in Washington during their term of office, perhaps living in
government housing so that once again members of opposing parties get to know
each other as individuals instead of only as a member of the opposition. Would it help if Congressmen and Senators
their spouses got to know each other, if their kids played with each
other? Would they better understand each
other? Would they be more willing to
compromise?
- We might require Congress to be in session eight hours per
day with all members in their respective chamber and/or their office or a
meeting room. Short breaks could be
allowed several times a year so members could return home to meet with their
constituents. Would making our
representatives spend more time in Washington result in them getting more work
done?
- We might severely limit campaign contributions and allow
only individuals to make contributions.
Corporations, organizations and groups might be forbidden from
contributing financially to campaign and/or offering non-monetary support.
Pacs, Super-Pacs and all such organizations might be outlawed. Is there a way to make Congressmen and
Senators work for their constituents and not the interest group or groups with
the most money?
- We might apportion the 100 Senators by population so that
large states would have more than two Senators and small states might share a
Senator. Would that make our government
more representative?
- We might have both a President and Prime Minister. The President could handle foreign policy and
serve as Commander-In-Chief of the armed forces. The Prime Minister could handle domestic policy
and direct the law making process. We
might allow the Prime Minister or President to manage the legislative process
by limiting debate on a bill, limiting amendments to a bill or banning them
completely, and/or declaring a bill critical to the national interest and therefore
considered passed if not blocked by Congress with a certain time frame. Is the job of President too big for one
person?
- We might give the President or Prime Minister the power to
dissolve Congress and call for a special election in the case of gridlock or we
might allow the President or Prime Minister to bypass Congress altogether and
call for a special national referendum.
Would that help or hurt?
These
are just some of the changes we could consider.
There are many more.
Let
me know what you think. Is it time to
start a dialogue about a new form of government/a new or greatly altered
Constitution? I think so. I say, let the debate begin. Do you agree?
