America is hopelessly polarized and dysfunctional, and the Constitution is to blame—at least that’s what generations of have argued. The onerous amendment process, the first-past-the-post elections, the unrepresentative Senate, the counter-majoritarian Supreme Court, and the idiosyncratic Electoral College are all, in their own pernicious ways, crippling our political life and driving us apart. Not so, insists in his timely and persuasive new book, .
In his telling, the Constitution is not failing us; we are failing the Constitution. The exasperating eccentricities and endless veto points in our national charter are frustrating if your goal is a swift, complete political victory. But the Founders didn’t set up the Constitution for parliamentary-style majoritarian triumph.
Instead, by design, the Constitution forces compromise and bargaining. It’s not just a legal and institutional framework; it’s also what Levin calls “a framework for union and for solidarity” that, if reclaimed, can help unify our fractured politics. ’s approach is methodical.
After a few framing chapters, Levin walks through the Constitution’s institutional components: federalism, the three branches of government, and political parties. (He notes that party politics were not part of the Founders’ vision, but that parties nonetheless came to be an invaluable part of the country’s political structure.) These chapters each follow a pattern: a description of how the Founders designed thing.