Conventional thoughts

Risks that come with changing everything

Every few years, somebody in Texas calls for the state to leave the union. Every few years, the flat tax comes back into vogue. Every few years, there is a serious effort to add D.C. as a state, or divide California into more than one state, or kill the Electoral College (depending on whether a Republican was recently elected president).

These things keep reporters busy in the off months. Interview a professor and a small-time politician somewhere, and presto! A story.

And, just in time, The New York Times has come out with its nearly annual piece on a new constitutional convention.

As in, a constitutional convention for the nation.

That is, the United States.

As if modern American politicians could give us something better than Washington, Adams, Madison, Jefferson and Franklin gave us.

The United States needs real change. And we could point out those needs (and tend to). But a constitutional convention?

As a governor from Arkansas — Frank White — once put it, that could open a whole box of Pandoras.

The idea, such that it is, goes like this: The federal government has acquired too much power. So to pull it back to its founding principles, We the People should hold another constitutional convention — the first in two centuries — and impose constraints on the government, fiscal and otherwise.

“We need to channel the energy to restore and reclaim this country’s traditional values and founding principles of limited government closest to the people and individual freedom and responsibility,” said Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator and presidential candidate, who speaks for the need of such a convention.

But as The Times notes (again), not all the pro-convention arguments come from the political right. The political left makes the occasional justification for a new chapter in the American story, too.

Some liberals “have welcomed the idea of a convention as a way to modernize the Constitution and win changes in the makeup and power of the Supreme Court, ensure abortion rights, impose campaign finance limits and find ways to approach 21st-century problems such as climate change.”

That’s always been the problem with a constitutional convention. The founders left no rules about one. And once opened, the Pandoras would flood out.

Some say that the convention could be called safely, limited to only proposing amendments to the Constitution. How cute. Since there are no rules, who would make that one? And what happens if a simple majority of those in attendance decides to overrule the limitation?

Lest we forget, the constitutional convention of 1787 wasn’t supposed to do more than firm up the Articles of the Confederation. Those federalists who wanted a stronger government had other things in mind.

Who will referee and answer these questions: Where would the convention be? Who would choose the delegates to it? How many delegates would each state get? Would the number of delegates be distributed based on the number of congressional seats, and then would those of us in Arkansas have to live under a new constitution that California, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania put together? Or would the states even get to select delegates? The Constitution doesn’t say. Would the constitutional convention be open to the public? The last one wasn’t. And could it replace, say, the First Amendment? Or the Second? Or the Fifth? Or just half of the amendments and Bill of Rights? And could it add, or subtract, the number of justices on the Supreme Court?

How about engraving a balanced budget into the Constitution itself, keeping the government from deficit spending during an emergency? (Like, say, a worldwide pandemic when people needed extra cash, health care and job rescues?)

Then those of another political stripe would demand, say, abortion rights be enshrined in the Constitutional. Or take out the one about guns. Where would it end?

Or would it?

Aconstitutional convention, once unleashed, could quickly become an open convention, depending on the delegates — and nobody else. Would the environmentalists get a couple of delegates from Oregon to get a new Fifth Amendment on the books? (“The right of the environment against unreasonable carbon emissions … .”)

What would We the People take out of law, and bake into the Constitution? Social matters of the day? Charter schools? College football leagues?

The document under which all Americans live, the United States Constitution, has been working well for a few centuries now, even if it has to be amended from time to time to make this a more perfect union. As a scholar and gentleman, not to mention a British prime minister, once put it, the U.S. Constitution is the greatest work of the mind of man ever struck off at a given moment in time.

A month ago, Business Insider used this headline concerning today’s subject: “Conservatives are 15 states away from a constitutional convention.”

That’s plenty of distance. Let’s keep it there.