Russ Feingold’s recent announcement of plans to revise the 17th amendment have brought the predictable responses about gubernatorial appointments for Senate seats. They have also tossed fuel for the fire on the old question of whether or not our process for amending the United States Constitution is too difficult. Over at The American Prospect, Dylan Matthews weighs in with his frustration over how hard it is to edit our founding documents.
Responses to Russ Feingold’s proposed constitutional amendment requiring special elections to Senate vacancies are generally unanimous on two points: one, this is a good idea, and two, this will never pass. And they’re both right. But rather than the shoulder-shrug fatalism that Feingold’s proposal has been greeted with, the correct reaction is support for changing our absurd Constitutional amendment procedure.
Matthews goes on to list a number of amendments, such as the E.R.A., removal of the electoral college and the abolition of lifetime terms for judges which he feels we’ve been remiss in passing. On a personal level I can certainly relate, as there are a number of things I wouldn’t mind changing myself. Given my druthers, I would eliminate the entire militia phrase from the second amendment, making it crystal clear that it’s an individual right, and the takings clause in the fifth would be several paragraphs longer, explaining exactly what public use means, vs. public benefit.
Of course, if you vested me with that power then you might as well name me emperor for life right now. The problem is that such changes are rarely clear cut and never unanimous. Even the E.R.A. faced significant opposition, including a sizable number of women who felt that the 14th amendment did a fine job of defining the rights of all “persons” and they were clearly “persons” already, thank you very much. For all I know, there may be a lot of you out there who have no problem with seeing your property being taken away and given to private business entities if it makes the community look nicer.
People’s views tend to change from time to time and demographics shift. This can happen generationally or, sometimes, in only a few years. For an example, look at the Mexico City Policy which President Obama just flipped over for the third time in as many presidents. Imagine if we passed a constitutional amendment banning all abortions. If that didn’t work out well enough, a few years later we wind up with another one assuring the right to an abortion. Then the religious right gets their ground forces in motion and we have yet another five years later. Pretty soon the Constitution has become a tattered, wavering joke. Prohibition should have taught us that lesson.
The point is, the Constitution should be hard to change. It should be a long, laborious process that enjoys extremely wide support and is to be undertaken only when a truly threatening shortcoming in the document is exposed and agreed upon. While Matthews gives a brief, dismissive nod to this idea, saying that “ratification-by-referendum, as per California protocol, would be a terrible move,” he still doesn’t seem to recognize the dangers inherent in his proposals. The Constitution is the bedrock of our entire system of government and body of laws. Having it flipping back and forth in the breeze would be a disaster and make us look like some sort of third world banana republic.