Program Information

Jefferson was by nature a reformer. And he was a thinker. And he was always asking, “How can we do this better?” He would be the inspiration for many others if they were to tackle Constitutional reform. Jefferson had no fear of change. He had no fear of the future. He welcomed it in many respects because he knew that society would be better in a hundred years than the one he saw in his own time.

The United States Constitution has been the foundation for the United States government and its citizens for over two hundred years. Many people believe it is the “gold standard” for fledgling democracies all over the world. It calls for the citizens to be active and for government to be accountable to those they govern. Many historians believe the Constitution has made our nation as successful and as powerful as it is; however, many of our citizens have not read or do not understand the Constitution and the foundation of our government. “Questioning the Constitution” looks at the development of the constitution, how it has been interpreted and questions whether the constitution should be reformed. This one-hour documentary was produced by WCVE PBS in partnership with the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

Transcript

SABATO: Jefferson was by nature a reformer. And he was a thinker. And he was always asking, “How can we do this better?” So, Jefferson was certainly my inspiration and I think he would be the inspiration for many others if they were to tackle Constitutional reform. Jefferson had no fear of change. He had no fear of the future. He welcomed it in many respects because he knew that society would be better in a hundred years than the one he saw in his own time.

WARNER: In 1796, I think it was, Jefferson became the Vice President of the United States, having served as Secretary of State under George Washington’s administration. And, uh, his principle function, if you look at Article I, Section III I believe, the only prescribed duty for the Vice President of the United States is presiding over the United States Senate. And in the course of the time he wrote a parliamentary manual for the rules of the Senate and to some extent, the House. Those rules still persist today. I think the founding fathers, very wisely, devised the Senate, and that each state be equal in terms of two for each state. You know, you’ve read the story, I’m sure of, and it’s a factually true story, of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. When he returned from France, Jefferson, who was not part of the Constitutional Convention, queried Washington as to why they had a Senate. What was the purpose of the Senate? And Washington said, “Well you’ve just answered the question.” He said “What do you mean?” He said, “You took your hot coffee and poured it into the saucer.” The Senate is a saucer to cool down the rhetoric and the thinking and the intemperance of what we call respectfully the other body—the House of Representatives.

SABATO: People are fascinated by the operation of the United States Senate because really it’s an anti-democratic institution. Small “d” democratic. Every state has two Senators. And even in the founder’s time, some states were much more highly populated than others. The highest populated state was 13 times the size of the least populated state. Today, the ratio is not 13 to one, it’s 70 to 1. California has 70 times the population of Wyoming. If you put together all the small states and you look at their populations, with two Senators per state, it takes exactly 17% of the population of the United States to elect a majority of the United States Senate. Is that healthy? I mean it’s, it’s OK to ask. The founders would have wanted us to ask. They were concerned about the tyranny of the majority. But if the tyranny of the majority is bad, isn’t the opposite extreme also bad, which is the tyranny of the small minority? In my view, 17% is a small minority.

A lot of what the federal government does is allocate tax money to the states. It will come as no surprise to people that the small states get far more than they’re due. Whether it’s transportation money or education money or farm subsidies, whatever it may be. What does that mean in practice? It means that the people who live in the large states are subsidizing the small states. Now, maybe that’s a good thing or maybe it isn’t. But we ought to think about it. We may not change them, and under the current Constitutional provision it may well take a consensus of the states to change the Senate, which means it will never happen. Because it would only take Wyoming to say, “No, we want to have two Senators just like California.” Uh, there are ways to do it in a Constitutional Convention, but it would be a difficult process to pull that off. But my point is, we ought to be thinking about these things. The least that could happen is that people would finally understand the Senate, and why it does what it does. And why it is so contrarian. And why it constantly stymies the interests of larger states and the heavy concentrations of American population.

LEVINSON: I believe that one of the real weaknesses of our political system is that we can’t fire a President in mid-term if we no longer have confidence in him or her. We can get rid of a criminal President through impeachment, though we’ve not, in fact, been able to do that, except possibly in the case of Richard Nixon, who resigned. If the Commander-in-Chief is incompetent, loses confidence in the country, we feel we’ll we’re just stuck with that person until the next election comes around. In most political systems around the world, there’s a procedure for vote of no confidence, which I think we need.

EPPS: I would be much more concerned with changing the way we elect the President because I think that’s immediately dangerous.

CAMPAIGN FOOTAGE: What are you afraid of? Count all the votes. Hey, ho, Al Gore’s got soul.

EPPS: Virtually all of your audience has lived through an example of the danger. This is a systemic flaw, it wasn’t just a happenstance that in 2000 the President of the United States took office. There was no pretense that we really wanted to know how the people of Florida had voted. Count’s over, we’re putting Bush in place. Well why were they even able to do that? Because of the Electoral College system. Because who carried Florida determined the election. If we had a president elected by popular vote, this simply wouldn’t happen. Um, and we would never have a president who took office, with fewer votes than another candidate. That’s indefensable. And you know this nearly happened the other way in 2004, if Kerry had carried Ohio. And that’s just as wrong. The president should be elected by the people and at a minimum should be the candidate who gets more votes than everybody else. But he certainly shouldn’t be the number two finisher. You know, think about it for a minute. How could that be?

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