License to Pontificate

by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

Larry Sabato opens up the floor for outside the box thinking on the structure of our current government. As he points out, the founders thought the Constitution ought to be amended or replaced with some frequency. Instead, things have changed subtly, through shifts in judicial interpretation and occasional spurts of amendments (the Civil War, the Progressive Era, and Civil Rights amendments). But Sabato points out that the Constitution was written for a nation of farmers (and a substantial number of textile factories in the North) at a time when the difference in population between Virginia and Connecticut was much lower, and you courier your messages to the capital.

Sabato promises to start with what's wrong with our current constitution, so let me throw out a few ways in which the country is has changed since the time of the Founders. Some of this is ground Professor Sabato has already covered, but here we go. Add yours in the comments:

• The ratio of small-state to large-state populations has increased. In 1790, Virginia had 12.5 times the population of Delaware. Today, California has 70 times the population of Wyoming. In 1790, Senators representing 14.7% of the population could sustain a filibuster under today's rules; today, that figure is 9.9%. I'm fine with the somewhat countermajoritarian nature of the Senate, but it's clear that things have gotten a little bit out of hand.
  
• Judges are appointed earlier and retiring later. Since 1980, turnover on the Supreme Court has ground to a near standstill. The situation on the lower courts, especially the DC circuit, is almost as bad. The Founders intended for the Courts to change slowly, but not this slowly.
• Travel is much faster, but the country is much larger. As recently as the 1960s, DC airports didn't have direct flights to much of the country. The common practice of Congress was to stay in the District for seven months, then stay in their home state or district and meet with constituents for five months. Today, most members fly home every weekend, even during session. This puts tremendous strain on Western members, who must endure six hour flights while their colleagues in New York can catch an hourly shuttle that gets them home in 45 minutes. At this point, it seems fair to consider moving the capitol, or at least having an auxiliary capitol that might be used every other year. The population center of the US is currently in central Missouri and continues to march West, so either moving the capitol to Kansas City, or putting a secondary capitol in Denver should do the trick.
  
  Somewhat separately, there is now tremendous pressure to be in one's home district all the time. When combined with the crush of fundraising, this limits the time that members have to collaborate with one another. We ought to make Constitutional provisions to ensure that members have the time and space to meet, rather than rely on staff at all times.
• The population has grown-a lot. The House has not kept up. The constitution mandates a state can have no more than one member of the House for each 30,000 residents. In the initial apportionment of the House, Pennsylvania received one for each 55,000 residents. Today each member represents about 700,000 residents. With a district sized to 1790 standards, a candidate could canvass the entire population in one Friedman Unit, meaning that every member would theoretically be vulnerable to a low-cost challenger. In addition, the effectiveness of TV advertising would drop to zero in most urban areas. Though, a figure that low would have other problems. California alone would have 650 members; Wyoming would have 9; the House as a whole would have 5454 members, which is clearly unworkable. In general, European countries have around one member per 100,000 residents; Japan, one per 265,000 residents; Russia, one per 320,000 residents. We ought to think about whether it's possible to have a much larger House with smaller congressional districts, with the hope that members will be more responsive to a smaller population and unable to win elections merely by blanketing the airwaves.
• Communication speed has increased dramatically. You no longer have to send messages to DC by horseback. You don't even have to telegraph them. I don't know what changes this implies to the structure of government, but clearly things have changed.
• Fundraising consumes too much time. Money will always be a part of politics, but at this point, the cost of campaigns has spiraled out of control. In order to win a Senate seat, you must either (a) self-fund, (b) know a lot of rich people with an inclination to give money to politicians, and/or (c) rely on a cadre of unelected fundraising consultants. We ought to admit that money is part of the political process, and decide just how much we want to allow individuals to curry favor through campaign contributions.
• Presidents keep going to "war" without, you know, asking Congress to declare war. See Korea; Vietnam; Iraq I; Iraq II. I've mentioned this before, and I'm glad to see I'm not the only one whose noticed.
  
  Also the natures of both conventional warfare and guerrilla warfare have changed. And while we're at it, the United States has a very large standing Army, Navy, and Air Force. The Constitution does not envision any sort of permanent ground force (though it does envision a permanent Navy), and while President's since Jefferson have authorized military operations without declaring war, the Framers intended for the balance of power to favor isolationism. It seems the proper response ought to be to set up a system that allows for a simple majority authorization for small-scale or low-intensity actions such as the re-installation of Aristede in Haiti or the invasion of Grenada, while requiring a 2/3s majority for something like the invasion of Iraq, or even the air campaign in Kosovo.