Reforming the Constitution

Yglesias hits on something that I've talked a bit about to friends and acquaintances but not really here on the blog. That is that many of the reforms many of us clamor for in the the way our politics work are not possible given our current constitution.

In the United States we do this very strange thing where almost every successful politician of either party and almost every pundit has a habit of complaining about gridlock, observing that Washington is broken, and other sundry clichés. And they’re right — we have a set of political institutions that were designed a very long time ago by men who, while intelligent, didn’t share modern values, didn’t have the benefit of observing different democratic political systems in operation, and had no sense of the challenges of modern politics. But at the same time as all this complaining about our broken system, the constitutional order that constitutes the broken system is revered. If, as a country, we really wanted to “change Washington” we could do what the Founders did, decide to scrap the whole thing, elect delegates to a big convention, and write a new one.

Yglesias rightly notes that such a convention will not take place, certainly not at a time or matter of our choosing. His larger point though is absolutely correct and it's something that I find many reformers, crusaders and activists ignore.

I revert back to this argument often times when discussing the viability of 3rd parties in the United States. With our current "first past the post" and "winner take all" electoral system there is no opportunity for niche 3rd parties to gain seats and create any amount of lasting momentum. Instead they pop up every 4 years, run for President, lose badly and then dissapear until the next Presidential election.

Some 3rd parties have tried to focus on winning local elections and then building the party from that base up. I think it's probably the best strategy but ultimately without a reform of our elections and a move towards a Parliamentary system (and Parliamentary reform would of course require a complete over-haul of our constitution) I still see a very bleak future for 3rd parties.

The reality is if you were creating a democracy today from scratch and basing it on a sort of "best practices" model that nations institutions would look entirely different from those created by our Founders. I think it's important to understand the structural and institutional limitations of our present situation and adjust our tactics, our strategies and our energies accordingly.