Yuval Levin’s new book argues that our founding document isn’t failing us — we are failing it.
Follow this authorRamesh Ponnuru's opinions
FollowTheir work had flaws, some of which now seem obvious. Levin regards two crucial post-1787 developments — the modern party system midwifed by Martin Van Buren and the Reconstruction amendments — as improvements that furthered the Constitution’s original goals.
The Founders also sometimes wrongly implied that they had created a system that would run by itself. Keeping it in good working order would require more than checks and balances; it would take civic virtue on the part of officials and citizens alike. But we have had more than a century of civic miseducation thanks to the influence of progressivism in the mold of Woodrow Wilson. The progressives of the early 20th century chafed at the limits the Constitution placed on government, and especially the need for building large coalitions before it could take decisive action.
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Over the decades, they altered our country’s governmental and political practice. Levin gently but relentlessly argues that theirs has been a disastrous success. Presidents now attempt to act as visionary policymakers more than as administrators, Congress has lost the habit of deliberating, and the judiciary is too often tempted to do the proper work of the other federal branches. State governments today grasp for dollars from the federal government more than for independence from it.
We now have a Wilsonian political culture operating a Madisonian Constitution, with dysfunctional and disappointing results. Which way to resolve that conflict depends on how we think about the trade-off between making coalition-building easier and making it less necessary.
The attraction of the second answer, the one progressives historically favored, and which not a few of today’s rightists have come to embrace, is the prospect of bold and sweeping government action. The Madisonian answer, seconded by Levin, frustrates such ambitions on purpose. The reforms he suggests to nudge our political practices back toward Madisonianism — such as a larger U.S. House, in which committees have more power and the........