Republic, Lost_ How Money Corrupts Congress--And a Plan to Stop It - Lawrence Lessig [133]
But what about all the other stuff a president does? you ask. What about being commander in chief? Or serving as head of state? Who would perform those duties during this constitutional regency?
The elected president. The elected president is the president. She has all the powers of the president, and during the term in which she serves, she executes those powers fully. I don’t mean this officer to be compromised in any way, except in the term during which she chooses to serve. Her term ends when Congress ratifies the changes that the people have demanded. At that point, she returns to private life and hands the government back over to the politicians. She is a regent president, holding office until the democracy grows up.
But why should she resign? you ask. After all, she’s actually succeeded in getting Congress to change the fundamental corruption that is its system. She sounds like a great person to serve as president. Why would we bench our star player?
The candidate’s promise is the essential element necessary to make her a credible change candidate. She needs to commit to reform in a way that makes it plain she intends to reform. If she doesn’t commit to that, or if she doesn’t carry through with her commitment, then she’s Lucy, and once again we’re Charlie Brown.
Moreover, her succeeding in getting this legislation passed would not necessarily make her a great president. Indeed, the attitude and inflexibility necessary to succeed in this role is precisely, I would argue, the wrong attitude and flexibility necessary to succeed as president. No successful president has ever done it alone. Not FDR, or Lincoln, or even Washington—all of them depended upon rich and serious engagement with all sides of an issue. That engagement requires humility, flexibility, and good political sense.
That’s not our reform, or regent president. As romantic and Hollywoodesque as she would seem, if she tried to carry that rigid and absolute character over into every sphere of presidential leadership, she would fail. A great president is not a great reformer. We have to recognize this, and separate the two. And that’s precisely what this plan is intended to do.
What are the chances this would work? Let’s be wildly optimistic: 2 percent.
So, what’s next?
CHAPTER 20
Strategy 4
The Convention Game
It has never happened. Or maybe it did, once. At the founding. But beyond that single example, we’ve never had a transformation effected by a federal constitutional convention.
In 1787 the best bet about the future of the United States was that the Union would dissolve and generations of internal wars would begin. America—or better, the “united States”—had won their (and at the time, the plural possessive was all anyone would dare to utter) war against Britain. But they had all but lost the peace. States refused to support the confederation. Congress had no power to deal with a wide range of crucial issues. And in the state legislatures, corruption was rampant.1 The Framers feared becoming their parents: “Look at Britain,” instructed Patrick Henry, “see there the bolts and bars of power; see bribery and corruption defiling the fairest fabric that ever human nature reared.”2 “[I]f we do not provide against corruption,” George Mason warned, “our government will soon be at an end.”3
The Constitution in effect at the time made change seem quite unlikely. Article XIII of the Articles of Confederation stated:
Every State shall abide by the determination of the united States in congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them. And the Articles of this confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a congress of the united States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State.
And while everyone might well have agreed that things were