The time has come to look at America's constitution of 1787 and ask: “is it still relevant to America 200 years later, considering the changes that have occurred in the nation over that period?” It may be time to modernize our 1787 Constitution, time to take action to move America's principal governing document into the 21st century and beyond.
The original founders were intelligent and thoughtful persons. They represented the best intellectual talent and understanding-of-the-times, available in America, in their day. Among all Americans of their day, America's founders were chosen for their task because they possessed the skills and abilities regarding “how to” construct a government for a brand-new nation, with all of the complexities and moving parts to be considered. Crafting a constitution for a new nation was a task never before attempted by our founders. They were starting from “square one” with little or no experience in creating a sovereign nation. They could not have imagined how America would evolve over more than two hundred years into the land and nation we know today. They did the best they could and produced a miracle for their time. We live today with their work of 200 years ago. The founders were not perfect and neither was the Constitution perfect. The Constitution fails to provide safeguards against dysfunctional and cognitively impaired personalities in the office of the U.S. President. This failure explains the ability of Donald Trump and Joe Biden to achieve the office of U.S. President.
America is currently suffering from the damaging impact of two U.S. Presidents, one past and one currently serving, whose performance and conduct in office have embarrassed and left Americans disappointed and questioning "how did this happen?” The answer has historical roots, way back, in the U.S. Constitution. First, there was Donald Trump. Boastful, self-centered, given to exaggerating his own importance and saying and doing things that were untrue and embarrassing to Americans and the office of United States President. Each time Trump appeared on TV, his words and manner so often was an embarrassment to America. When Trump declared that John McCain was not a war hero, this was an insult to a genuine American war hero who spent several years imprisoned by the North Vietnamese, and his family. That was Trump at his most brutal. Several labels have been used over the years by his critics and enemies to define Trump. The most frequently used label by Trump's critics and others appears to be "liar''.
Following Trump, America was given Joe Biden, a veteran of 47 years’ "service to America" in the Washington "Swamp." "Sleepy Joe," the name awarded him by Donald Trump, will be remembered for presiding over the disastrous mess associated with the Afghanistan War and the chaotic withdrawal that marked the end of America's participation in that war. He will be remembered for the immigration crisis on America's southern border that allowed thousands of undocumented migrants, including criminals, terrorists and COVID carriers, into the US without having followed the established process for achieving legal status.
The founders were innovative and thoughtful in establishing a governing structure for the new nation that avoided the faults and failures of existing systems worldwide presided over by despots, kings and autocrats. Too often these systems relegated the masses to poverty and servitude while their rulers lived fat and happy lives in their palaces and manors. What happened that caused America to be placed in the "care" of two presidents, both of whom are unworthy and unfit for the U.S. Presidency; Donald Trump, a bully and pathological liar, and Joe Biden, a feeble and cognitively challenged pretender to the office. Blame it on the Constitution and the founders? Where did they err? The answer to this may go to two critical assumptions made by the founders in assembling the constitution.
The first assumption was that the persons who voted were sufficiently intelligent to understand the issues facing America and would rise above their narrow and selfish perspectives and elect to political offices persons who would place the interests of the whole of America first and their personal, local interests second. This assumption proved wrong. A portion of America's voting population was indifferent to – or intellectually incapable of – comprehending the critical issues facing America. The second assumption made by the founders posited that men and women elected to political office, especially at the federal level, where so much of the nation's treasure is collected and legislatively awarded, would be honest, competent, void of deceit and deception, free of narrow political bias and self-interest and ethical in managing America's business. This assumption also proved wrong.
The office of the US Presidency has an image that must be maintained. The President's image is part of the strength and credibility of his office. The President of the United States has the duty to maintain that image. This involves his/her appearance, how he or she holds himself/herself, walks, talks, mixes and mingles with the public. Generally speaking. the president's image must convey authority, decisiveness and command of his/her presidential world of domestic and world leaders. He/she must be seen as the "Boss." Joe Biden falls far short of his duty to provide an image of decisiveness and credibility to the US Presidency. He appears more to be a feeble, cognitively lame, old man, seemingly in a confused and uncertain state of mind. The question on the minds of many Americans is "who's running the government?"
Biden has damaged his own credibility by the quality of advisors he has chosen to assist him in performing the role of president. His principal advisors during the Afghanistan debacle: Secretary of State Antony Blinken; Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley failed miserably to competently plan and execute US withdrawal from Afghanistan, resulting in thirteen Americans killed and hundreds abandoned and left behind at the mercy of the Taliban. None of the advisors and other officials who were responsible to President Biden and America for events in Afghanistan have been fired or removed from office. Biden is willing to tolerate failure and ineptitude among the persons he selects for positions of great influence at the highest levels of America's government.
There is a question here larger than Biden's competence that should be seriously examined and assessed. It has to do with how America selects the President of the United States, our national leader. We do it now by a process that leads to a national election that produces a president because he or she captures the most popular, and then the most Electoral College, votes. There's more, however. In the end we, the voters, are forced to choose between the two candidates selected by the two major political parties, Democrat and Republican. The task America faces now is to produce a better way of finding presidential leadership. I am convinced it can be done. It must be done. The practice of allowing the two political parties to dictate who is allowed to become president is a very flawed and ineffective way of filling the Oval Office and must be replaced by some method that is more affordable to Americans and inclusive among all strata of America's culture and society, therefore, more democratic.
Perhaps we should appoint a new set of "founders" to study the matter of our constitution and propose changes, if needed, to take America from the horse and buggy, agriculture-heavy, cottage industry age into the world of automobile, flying machine, mass production and high-tech industry that is America today and for the future.
Felsher, a longtime Hattiesburg resident, is a retired Army colonel. He can be reached at efelsher1936@comcast.net
