It’s time to modernize the United States Constitution. The means and method for doing this would involve a Constitutional Convention with debate among jurists, political scientists, historians, other learned persons and include a representative sampling of Americans from across the nation’s cultural spectrum.
When it was written, our constitution reflected America of 1787.
White people were the majority and ran things. The country was home to approximately three million people, mostly of British and European stock, populating thirteen states situated along the Atlantic coast from Maine to Georgia.
It was a rural land and agriculture dominated the economy. There were only six cities with a population of 8,000 or greater and no city exceeded 50,000 inhabitants.
Fast forward to Twenty-first Century America. Now the nation is a land of 300 million people, living in 50 states stretching east to west more than 3,000 miles, and includes an island in the Pacific Ocean and a piece of detached real estate in the frozen northern portion of the planet.
The nation has a highly diverse population, with sizable blocs of African-Americans (also known as black people), Asians and Hispanics. White people, while still a significant number, do not represent the commanding demographic and increasingly do not run things.
It’s estimated that by the year 2050 white people will be a minority group in America, with African-Americans and Hispanics forming the majority.
Big cities, some with populations in the millions, dot the landscape. Business and industry dominate America’s economy.
Only 17 percent of Americans are considered rural dwellers and fewer than 3 percent make their living on a farm.
Among the actions and amendments to our Constitution that should be considered in the course of the convention are the following:
n Move the seat of national government. This is long overdue. Locating the nation’s capital in Washington, D.C., was the right thing to do when America consisted of thirteen states, all located along the eastern seaboard.
But both the size and population demographics of the U.S. now suggest that it would be wise to site the national capitol in a more central location.
In its present Washington, D.C., location, the national government is disproportionately influenced by the cultural, societal, financial and political values of the large and wealthy eastern metropolitan areas.
Displacing the national capitol to midwestern America would be good for both the physical and moral health of the U.S. Government - physical health due to the increased difficulty a hostile power would have in reaching the capitol with land forces or nuclear weapons in the event of war, and moral health due to the exposure of government leaders to mid-American values of honesty, integrity and hard work, scarce qualities in the current Washington, D.C., political environment.
n Reduce the costs of running for political office. The expense of campaigning is at the core of the problems facing America’s political system.
Candidates for political office, especially at the state and national levels, must have access to big dollars to stand any chance of winning an election.
That’s understandable.
Television and radio spots are expensive. Costs associated with staff salaries, travel and thousands of pieces of printed material necessary for campaigning are enormous.
A candidate for political office must get his or her face and voice to the voting public.
In the end, it all adds up to one heck of a cost.
There appears to be three relatively simple and workable fixes to the problem of reducing the costs of campaigning.
First, shorten the campaigning season to something reasonable, say 60 or 90 days.
Second, provide bona fide candidates for office with equal amounts of free TV time.
Third, provide mandatory public financing as the sole source of campaign funds for bona fide political candidates at the state and national levels of election.
These three reform measures could very well liberate the nation’s candidates for political office from the grip of special interests and Political Action Committees.
When that happens, integrity will start to return to politics in the U.S.
n Require a balanced budget. Until this is done, the federal deficit will continue to grow annually. The U.S. has got to learn to live within its financial means.
When it’s budget time, senators and representatives will first look out for the interests of their states and districts. That’s where they get the votes to get reelected. It’s the game of politics and Tip O’Neill got it right when he said “All politics is local.”
At some point, however, and that point was reached long ago, something must force the self-centered and myopic members of congress to do what’s right for America. Nothing less than a constitutional requirement to balance the budget annually will force the president and congress to eliminate the practice of “earmarks” and spend no more money than the country receives in the form of revenues.
n Eliminate lifetime tenure and pay for Supreme Court justices. The Supreme Court is no place for old or sick people.
Supreme Court justices must be healthy people capable of deep and critical thinking. It makes no sense at all to maintain on the Supreme Court justices who, because of age, have passed their prime in terms of mental acuity or awareness.
Neither does it make sense to allow a justice to remain on the court who, because of disease or other physical ailment, is unlikely to possess the powers to concentrate on critical issues before the court and render judgments consistent with Constitutional intent.
While the justices should be compensated adequately and appropriately in retirement, like any federal government retiree, there is no sensible argument for continuing their pay in retirement at the same level provided during active service.
n Reduce the size of the U.S. Congress and give the president greater powers to solve problems without having to wait upon a sluggish and irresolute congress to move. The 535 members of congress constitute a huge committee.
Any good manager knows that the one sure way to delay or avoid taking action on an issue or problem is to turn it over to a committee. And the bigger the committee, the greater the delay in getting action. The U.S. Congress proves this every day.
n Provide U.S. presidents with a single eight-year term of office. Under current rules, a newly-elected president must start running for reelection on his first day in office. This must, of necessity, consume a sizable amount of his time that could be much better spent attending to the duties of his office and the needs of the nation.
If he wishes to see his programs through to full fruition, then he must be able to capture a second four-year term in office.
Just as soon as he wins a second four-year term, he becomes a lame duck president and begins to take a back seat to all of the other contenders for his office who have started their campaigns.
A single eight-year term would permit a president to initiate new programs and pursue them forcefully and diligently without the worry of constantly campaigning for reelection.
This would benefit the nation even more than the person holding the office of president.
n Require that death sentences must be carried out within one year of being ordered.
Currently, it’s possible for a criminal awaiting execution for the most heinous of crimes to remain in jail for ten, fifteen or even 20 years before being put to death. Victims’ families are forced to wait for years for justice while lawyers play games with a legal system that allows convicted murderers sentenced to death to go on living for undeserved years at taxpayer expense.
This is more than stupid and ludicrous. It is cruel and unusual punishment inflicted upon the families and friends who live daily with the memories of the brutality suffered by a loved one.
The legal system that permits this is itself guilty of criminal behavior. So too are the lawyers who are part of the system guilty of unprofessional, unethical and criminal conduct.
n Require that the President of the United States and all civilian members of the national security apparatus receive some amount of formal instruction in the development of national strategy and the use of America’s armed forces in the planning and execution of national strategy.
The U.S. President commands an armed force of millions of men and women, active duty and reserve components.
He presides over the best equipped and trained armed force that has ever existed, consisting of weapons whose precision and lethality testify to the extent that technology has come to dominate warfare. And yet, this massive armed force has often been entrusted to a person with little or no background in military service or related military matters.
The men and women who occupy the front lines of America’s defenses around the world demand and deserve competent leadership, starting at the top with the President of the United States as Commander In Chief.
Training the president and his national security assistants in the principles and fundamentals of national defense would not be a difficult thing to do.
The U.S. Army War College, where many of the military’s most promising officers are trained in developing national strategy and war plans for the highest level of military operations, could easily develop an abbreviated course of instruction for the president that would provide the essentials for decision making at the Commander in Chief level.
It will not be an easy or quick thing to change the United States Constitution. Convening a Constitutional Convention is probably the place to start, but putting the convention together and establishing the protocols and mechanics within the convention for deciding upon the changes to be considered, and the how-to of making change happen, will be awesome and difficult tasks.
Just the politics involved will present huge difficulties and barriers to the work of the convention. Extremist elements from both ends of the political spectrum will labor mightily to prevent any change to the constitution that does not accord with their notion of what’s best and right for America.
The Founding Fathers must be commended for their accomplishment in constructing a constitution that has served America well for more than 200 years.
Some might even call their product a work of genius. But things have changed in 200 plus years and this alone advises a relook at our Constitution, the guiding document for America’s democracy.
The assumptions upon which America’s governmental structure and practices were designed and created must now be critically examined and, where necessary, changed.
Felsher, a longtime Hattiesburg resident, is a retired Army colonel.
