This week’s Punctilio Award goes to the Journal Gazette for wasting ink and newsprint to publish this tripe by Sanford Levinson. If you want to waste your time, read the whole thing. The point of Levinson piece is that our US Constitution is so flawed that it should be thrown out and rewritten to meet today’s world rather the world as it existed 200 years ago.
First, if I were allowed to pick “today’s framers”, I suppose that Levinson’s idea would be a good one. But the gathering of modern day framers would no doubt be a hodgepodge of the usual suspects that get throw into the mix whenever elected officials want to duck tough issues. Look at the 9-11 Commission. Half of that commission was more interested in keeping Bill Clinton’s legacy one of a president that diddled the help rather than THE president who helped the terrorists diddle America. So from the gitgo Levinson’s idea is dead in the water. There are no modern day politicians with the statesmanship, the intellect and foresight of the original framers capable of doing the necessary hard work.
Another indicator that Levinson is an idiot is his idea that because President Bush is at about 40% approval rating in the polls that equates to 60% wanting him removed from office as an incompetent. That is utter foolishness. First, if asked if the president should be removed in favor of Vice President Cheney, the president’s approval would probably exceed 80% (I'd be in the 20% favoring Cheney). So unless Levinson is in favor of removing the president for some unnamed, unelected Jed Bartlett type, his entire premise falls flat on its face. If his premise is that house Republicans would then pick one of their own, we’d be looking at Dennis Hastert and again the president’s approval goes up to about 80%. Last, is Levinson so obtuse as to have forgotten when our government was divided and Bill Clinton was president with a Republican House? What would Levinson have happen there? The house, given a half way step to avoid impeachment would certainly have chosen it. Would Levinson have accepted a President Gingrich?
Levinson, who happens to be bilking unsuspecting parents who send their youngsters off to college to be “educated” (in Levinson’s classroom re-educated is probably a better word) out of cash in his job as a “professor” of law at Texas University, makes equally insane arguments about the structure of the senate. Why does Wyoming have as much power as California in senate? Well Sanford (I hear the Sanford and son theme song in my head now) it’s because there is this other little know body in Washington called the House of Representatives. In the house states are given proportional representation in accordance to their population – 1 representative per about every 640,000 people. And that is why we do a census every ten years.
Another thing Fred, uh er, Sanford takes on is the Electoral College. Why not just go with the popular vote. Because Fred, the original framers wanted a two party system to prevent some nut job law professor from fooling enough of the voters on a ballot with 25 other candidates to win an election with a plurality of about 15% of the vote - which ironically would immediately make him eligible for removal from office under Fred’s first idiotic point. Besides, Democrats have proven that they are incapable of figuring out a ballot with only three names. Imagine the nightmare scenario for Democrats trying to find Pat Buchanan’s name on a ballot with 20-30 other names.
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