President Donald Trump has left the U.S. at the mercy of “a clown show” in the White House, but according to a new piece from Politico, these circumstances might be what “accelerates change” for the better.
Jonathan Martin is the politics bureau chief and senior columnist for Politico. To mark America’s 250th anniversary on Saturday, he published a new piece arguing to offer a “prescription” for treating the “curdled state of American democracy.”
“This is, however, a country built on the idea of not just self-government but self-improvement,” Martin wrote. “The founders made that clear by crafting a Constitution with the capacity for amendment. The next century’s best chronicler of America, Alexis de Tocqueville, said that the genius of the nation was its capacity for correction.”
He continued: “The idea of America as an evolving project is so woven into the national DNA that on the country’s 200th birthday, President Gerald Ford called this a ‘union of corrected wrongs and expanded rights’ while making sure to note that “the struggle for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is never truly won.”
Martin specifically highlighted comments from Danielle Allen, director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at Harvard’s Kennedy School, who argued that “the forces of reform have been building for a decade,” and that “the next 10 to 20 years are going to bring significant structural reforms” in the wake of Trump’s wreckage. The answer to the sorry state of the U.S., she and Martin argued, will involve extensive amendments to the Constitution, a key tool provided by the founders for fixing what ails the country.
“She proposes an expansive suite of initiatives that would amend the Constitution to regulate money in politics, create a larger and more proportional House of Representatives and transform primaries and end gerrymandering to elect lawmakers who reflect a broader swath of voters,” Martin wrote.
“We must make the decisive election the general election again so the whole electorate can make the decision about who represents them,” Allen explained, arguing further that gerrymandering and closed primaries have left 60 million Americans feeling as if they “no longer have a meaningful voice in federal elections.”
Martin also noted that, while it may be an unpopular idea with the general public, salaries for lawmakers in Congress need to be increased, both to help make public service more enticing for “best of the country” as opposed to private sector paydays, and to make them less easily swayed by big money lobbying efforts.
“Congress itself is crying out for self-improvement, and perhaps most critical is wooing the best of the country to resist, or delay, financial temptations to pursue public service,” Martin wrote. “It may poll down there with compulsory veganism, but significantly increasing congressional salaries from the current $174,000 is essential for recruitment and retention.”