Can a Constitution of Genius Work for a Nation of Imbeciles?

“Ricks writes: ‘In a nutshell, Washington was sensing the limits of virtue as a driver of the new country. He is not often seen as a political philosopher, but in his own quiet way he was ahead of most of his peers.'”

Although it is currently in vogue to trash American constitutionalism, the consensus has long been that the Constitutional structure devised by the Philadelphia Convention’s delegates in 1787 is nothing short of genius. In particular, the Constitution’s foremost defenders have lauded its enshrinement of the Madisonian objective to allow “ambition to counteract ambition” by meticulously dividing power between branches and levels of government.

The praise is warranted. An honest assessment of human nature—in particular, our fallen, imperfect nature and our propensity for depravity—counsels against any undue concentration of power. The framers understood this, and we ought to be most grateful that they did. Without such understanding, it is hard to imagine that our multiethnic, diverse, continental union that houses about as many worldviews as it does people would still be standing, as it is today, under a system of democratic republican self-governance.

Without casting aside our requisite gratitude, however, we should ask ourselves: Might the Constitution be too good at blunting the potentially destructive force of the worse angels of our nature? Might our Constitutional system be so capable of keeping the ship of state afloat even in the face of putrid political conduct that it, in fact, opens the door to said conduct? Might the stabilizing, moderating, and constraining influences imposed on American public affairs by the Constitutional genius of the framers be, in part, to blame for the unstable, extreme, rancid political behavior that permeates our public life?

“Don’t worry about the public good,” whispers the Constitution to the conspiracy-prone citizen or demagogic politician, “I’ll take care of it.”

The constitutional structure devised by the framers—and by James Madison, in particular—has proven quite stable and durable, even in the face of immense bombast and bad faith acting over the years. I suspect that the poverty of public virtue in our public life and the unflappable character of American constitutionalism might be connected. The Constitution has lowered the stakes of poor political conduct; it has implicitly communicated to citizens and political leaders alike that they can indulge their worst impulses because, after all, the system will prevent disaster from striking. “Don’t worry about the public good,” whispers the Constitution to the conspiracy-prone citizen or demagogic politician, “I’ll take care of it.” The most recent example of this dynamic has been the durability of the system in the face of President Trump, et al.’s post-election ginning up of utter stupidity and bad faith, conspiratorial argumentation. In the face of this onslaught, as The Dispatch’s David French recently wrote, “the majesty of the American system of government” did not crack.