A special
commission or committee of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences has
recently published a hefty pamphlet entitled Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century. I
think every voter in the country should read it. The AAAS, one of our nation’s oldest cultural
institutions, was founded two hundred and forty years ago by various worthy
colonials—including Sam Adams, John Hancock, and James Bowdoin—who, one might think,
could have been too busy with the rather strenuous efforts then in progress to
become post-colonial to indulge in
such luxuries. But the Americans
prevailed in their Revolution, and the AAAS, with its geographical headquarters
in the new nation’s version of Cambridge, was there at the birth. As with the French Legion of Honor, whose
numbers are legion, at any given moment several thousand people at least
somewhat prominent in the arts and humanities, sciences, business, industry,
public service, philanthropy, etc., are elected members of this august
fellowship.
I was very
pleased to be elected some fifteen years ago or so, and I enjoyed the induction
ceremony and conference at the Academy’s headquarters in Cambridge. Since then, however, my association with the
Academy has been limited to that of a debtor, chased down once a year for my
dues and a second time for a voluntary contribution. From time to time the Academy issues special
white papers on miscellaneous topics, and I do frequently read its intellectually
upscale journal, Daedalus, which
often has interesting essays, and not all of them written in the leaden prose
apparently favored by academic social scientists and economists. This booklet entitled Our Common Purpose, however, is the best thing I have seen to issue
forth from the Academy. I speak of its
thoughtful and exciting ideas. The last
committee to achieve memorable English prose were the translators of the
Authorized Version of the Bible working for James I in 1611.
The Common Purpose generally
achieves clarity, which is all one can ask for.
Admittedly, there are a few passages like this (Strategy 1.1, p. 13)
speaking of the historical ratio between congressional representatives and
those they represent, that take a minute to soak in: “While the original proportions are no longer
achievable, the goal of closer connections between members of Congress and
constituents should not be.”
I first
learned of this document from an Academy email, but I really took notice when
it was featured on the PBS “News Hour”.
Judy Woodruff, the program’s anchor, was actually on the
Commission. Even more interesting to me
was the fact that Danielle Allen, who appeared on the PBS program, was one of
its three co-chairs. Professor Allen is
a superstar classicist at Harvard, but she gained something of a popular
reputation a few years ago with a terrific book entitled Our Declaration: A Reading of
the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality. I came to know her reasonably well and admire
her greatly when she was an undergraduate at Princeton and a member of the
residential college of which I was allegedly in charge.
Anyone with
eyes to see and ears to hear knows that our country is in a real mess from
which our current dysfunctional politics is incapable of extracting us. We have a President that a majority of our
citizens disapprove of and a Congress that a huge majority disapprove of.
They are symptoms of the mess rather than its causes. The causes are the infirmity and failure of
American democracy. There is no
substitute for reading the Commission’s document, a task requiring perhaps half
an hour, and I shall mention only a few of its six major clusters of recommendations
or “strategies” as the committee calls them.
The overarching goal is the actualization of democracy and the fullest possible participation of informed citizens in it. The suggestion of a significant expansion in the
size of the House of Representatives, already noted, aims to make possible nearer
equality in constituency size and some actual possibility of a vital connection
between citizens and those who represent them.
At the moment the average member of Congress has three quarters of a
million constituents. Another proposal
that wins my assent is term limits for justices of the Supreme Court, organized
within an orderly schedule of transition.
The authors call for a compulsory, universal, and compensated civic obligation of
national service. And they get serious about “campaign finance reform”—which is not
their term, but the ludicrous one we keep hearing from our do-nothing politicians
compromised to their eyeballs in their scramble for money. A large part of the genius of the
Commission’s recommendations is that they could mostly be achieved by
legislation; but this absolutely indispensable cleansing of the political
temple does require one constitutional amendment.
They recognize that this would be a heavy lift, but it really is worth
the while to duke it out, if necessary, and this time one hopes metaphorically,
over whether we actually believe that all men are created equal.
Constitutional
knowledge is a good thing, constitutional idolatry less good. As more and more Americans have abandoned the
more traditional ideas of transcendence illuminated by a sacred text, they have
turned in their bereavement to the Constitution, apparently regarded not merely
as infallible but probably also untouchable.
But we have plenty of real sacred texts still available: the Bible, the
Koran, the I-Ching, the Rig Veda, Moby Dick, To Kill a Mocking Bird, The
Fountainhead, The Awakening, and Beatles
lyrics. Invest your transcendental hopes
in one of those, or another of your choosing.
It would be best to regard the
Constitution for what it is, a highly
contingent practical rule book designed for real people in a rapidly and unpredictably
changing world. It may still be valid
even if the word “Congress” is not printed in eighteenth-century Caslon type, Congreff.
That is why such Founders as Jefferson thought that, as a matter of
course, there should be frequent periodic constitutional conventions to review
and update it.
Before
immediately obsessing over dubious and debatable interpretations of “what the
Founders intended” by “a well-ordered militia” or an “establishment of
religion,” it might be better to start with one certain and indubitable
intention: the achievement of a more
perfect union. They knew that their bundle
of bright ideas and painful compromises was far from the last word on this
topic. That is why they included an
amendment process and got off to a flying start with the Bill of Rights. What amendment means is improving, making
better.
I agree with
most though not all of the recommendations; and I doubt that the report will be
greeted with unqualified enthusiasm by any large number of its readers. Unanimous votes are generally characteristic
of “people’s republics” and other sham democracies, not real ones. But my general reaction is enthusiastic, as I hope it will be for most Americans. What shines through the recommendations is
something very rare in recent political discourse. Some very smart people, coming to their task
from differing perspectives but united in patriotic ambition, have thought long
and hard about the nature and causes of our obvious national malaise, but also tried
to seek its potential remedy. The
document is not merely intelligent but civil and optimistic. In the constricting mental framework in which
everything must be either reactionary or radical, bright red or deep blue, this
proposed enterprise for the “reinvention” of democracy presents a challenge of
classification. It is a deeply
conservative reaffirmation of the radicalism of our nation’s founding as
famously described by Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address, “a new nation,
conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created
equal.” Lincoln did not use the word
“reinvention”; his better phrase was “a new birth of freedom.”
The following video presents an
introduction to Our Common Purpose:
