Bob Cornwell
Jul 22, 2017 · 3 min read

This is a very good piece.

However, there are two points I believe the author left out:

1.) Everyone. And I mean everyone. Everyone who assumes any kind of government office, and this includes the soldier and the police officer, as well as the mayor, the city council member, the legislator, the governor, the representative, the senator, and even the president, has to take an oath to defend the constitution.

This is priority number one. Following the command chain is priority number two. No one is ever expected to take an oath to follow the president. In fact, such an oath may not even be allowed.

Practically speaking, this means anyone in the president’s administration, and anyone under the authority of the president’s administration, including those in the army, navy and the marines, can turn on the president at any time, providing he/she can make a credible claim she/he is defending the constitution in so doing.

Granted, under normal conditions, such an event is highly unlikely.

But these are not normal times.

2.) President Trump is not the problem but a symptom of the problem. We have an ineffective congress because we have an ineffective democracy. No effective democracy would ever allow Gerrymandering or a campaign finance system where anyone who has a lot of money can outspend everybody else in election campaigns. Today’s Republican party is practically owned by as few as maybe six people, or fewer. Top of the list, of course, are the Koch brothers.

The US constitution, some would rightfully argue, is not about pure democracy. It is about impure democracy, where the rights of the majority must be balanced against the rights of the minority. This is not as easy as it may sound. But the general idea here is that minorities have a certain number of minimum rights which the majority are not allowed to trample.

This is in my view the most important idea in our constitution. To give up on this idea is to invite spectacles such as post election riots, which happen in other countries.

But what we have here today is not an impure democracy, but a fake one, where a very small minority has seized almost all the meaningful power. This indeed needs to change. The minority (the very rich, such as Trump) need to have rights which cannot be trampled on by the rest of us, but we are entitled to our rights as well. And these are what are systematically being denied. The Trump presidency is the triumph of the super rich minority over the rest of us.

We do not need a new republic.

What we do need is to correct the flaws in the old one.

I recommend three amendments:

  1. Do away with popular elections of the president. I believe they do more damage to our democracy than good. We have lucked out on a number of occasions, but we have also gotten a fair number of stinkers, present president included. Presidential elections have become circuses. In fact, presidential elections have always been circuses.
  2. Change the way Supreme Court justices are selected. Presidents who are elected by what is essentially a nation popularity contest (or at least a least unpopular one) should not get to pick jurists whom will deciding the meaning of the constitution for the next one or two generations. A new system needs to be devised which is designed to frustrate the stacking the court to fulfill ideological ends.
  3. Enshrine the right of majority opinions to actually win elections. This would mean, among other things, criminalizing the practice of Gerrymandering. It would also mean forcing those who insist on strict voter ID laws to pay the cost of meeting these demands. Voting is a right, not a privilege. It would also mean somehow mitigating the power of big campaign contributor cash. Requiring matching funds from the treasury, or perhaps having a share-the-wealth tax on large campaign war chests might be two options to consider.

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