Interesting guest on the Diane Rehm Show today (NPR/KERA 90.1): Larry J. Sabato, a Political Science professor at the University of Virginia. He was there to talk about his "career" book, A More Perfect Constitution, the latest of 20 or so books under his name and the product of 30 years of thought. In it he makes "23 proposals to [change] our Constitution and make America a fairer country;" I have not read the book, and it is on my wishlist to read as soon as I get through the 20 or so books on my bedside table, but here are a few of the more interesting changes that Sabato discussed with Diane Rehm, organized here by topic:
President
- Extend the Presidential term length to 6 years with an optional 2 year extension as a "yea/neigh referendum" vote.
- Turns out Jimmy Carter and most living ex-Presidents support this
- Allows Presidents to get done what needs to get done w/o having to worry about re-election and deals with the "6th year slump" that affects most second term Presidents.
Supreme Court
- 15 year term limits for Justices.
- Addresses the fact that most Justices are many generations out of touch with the zeitgeist of their confirmation hearings.
- Turns the Supreme Court into a stage in one's career rather than a career itself.
Senate
- Expand the Senate to 136 members to be more representative: Grant the 10 most
populous states 2 additional Senators, the 15 next most populous states 1
additional Senator, and the District of Columbia 1 Senator.
- This prevents what Sabato calls the "tyranny of the minority:" the States with the smallest proportion of the population now have a disproportionately large percentage of influence from what the Founding Fathers intended because there is now a 70/1 difference between the most and least populous States (was 14/1 when the Constitution was created).
Congress
- Expand the size of the House to approximately 1,000 members (from current
435), so House members can be closer to their constituents, and to level the
playing field in House elections.
- The existing budget for 450 Reps would be divided among 1000 as well.
Other
- Adopt a regional, staggered lottery system, over 4 months, for Presidential
party nominations to avoid the destructive front-loading of primaries.
- Divide the nation into 4 sections; each section does its primaries over a 1 mo. time period; order is determined literally by drawing names from a hat.
- Create a Constitutional requirement that all able-bodied young Americans devote at least 2 years of their lives in service to the country (either in non-profit, civil/foreign service, or military)
- Convene a new Constitutional Convention using the state-based mechanism left
to us by the Framers in the current Constitution.
- This is failsafe against radicalism b/c changes must be ratified by the States themselves, and it only takes 13 States to kill an amendment.
You can see all of the proposed changes on Sabato's website, here.
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