152) Livro defende reforma da Constituição americana

Segundo a Economist, grande parte de suas idéias são razoáveis. Larry Sabato, um professor de política da Universidade da Virgínia, diz, por exemplo, que os grandes estados norte-americanos deveriam ter mais senadores.
Sabato diz ainda que o presidente dos EUA deveria ter mais poder para vetar os gastos supérfluos e menos poder para fazer guerras. Ele defende também que se acabe com o impedimento de que um norte-americano que não nasceu nos EUA possa se tornar presidente.
Sabato quer uma Constituição mais adaptada ao século XXI. Mas ele admite que, apesar de ser velha, a Constituição norte-americana vem funcionando melhor do que qualquer outra, em qualquer país.
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Paulo Roberto de Almeida, 10/11/2007

If it ain't broke

Book:
A More Perfect Constitution: 23 Proposals to Revitalize Our Constitution and Make America a Fairer Country
By Larry J. Sabato
Walker; 352 pages; $25.95

The Economist, Nov 8th 2007

LAST month America's foremost Third Amendment rights group celebrated two centuries of defending Americans' constitutional right not to have soldiers quartered in their homes. “Keep the fat hands of soldiers out of America's larders!” read the T-shirts and bumper stickers. At least, according to the Onion, a spoof newspaper.

But perhaps the satirists were making a useful point. Some parts of America's venerated constitution do sound out of date. The framers met in 1787 to craft a compromise that might keep together a fissile federation of states beset by powerful external enemies. The document's worst flaw—allowing slavery to persist—was corrected in 1865. But the essential framework within which America is governed has barely been tinkered with since Thomas Jefferson's day. Larry Sabato, a top-notch politics professor at the University of Virginia, thinks it is time to give it an overhaul.

Most of his gripes are reasonable. The Senate is horribly undemocratic. Because each state elects exactly two senators, thinly-peopled rural states wield disproportionate influence. If the 26 smallest ones stick together, they have a majority of votes despite representing only 17% of Americans. Mr Sabato wants to restore some fairness by giving extra senators to big states.

The House of Representatives has different afflictions. Members are elected to such short terms (two years) that they never stop campaigning. Incumbents of both parties bust sinews to stifle electoral competition. They gerrymander shamelessly, drawing up electoral districts that are either safely Democratic or safely Republican. They use the advantages of office to raise heaps more cash than their challengers. They are nearly always re-elected, depriving the House of fresh talent. Mr Sabato wants to ban gerrymandering (except racial gerrymandering), to establish term limits and to more than double the size of the House so that each member will know a smaller area better.

And he is just warming up. Mr Sabato wants a president with more power to veto wasteful spending but less to make war. He wants to end the antiquated bar on non-native-born Americans becoming president (a source of irritation to Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's Austrian-born governor). He wants to replace the current maximum of two four-year presidential terms with a fiddly arrangement involving one six-year term which can be extended by two years.

Next, Mr Sabato would shake up the Supreme Court by ending life tenure and setting a compulsory retirement age for judges. Then he moves swiftly on to the way political parties pick presidential candidates. To avoid the current race by states to hold their primaries earlier than each other—which makes the campaign far longer than it needs to be—Mr Sabato would decide by lottery which states may hold their primaries on which dates.

Not content with rejigging the building blocks of government, Mr Sabato also wants to lay constitutional obligations on individual citizens. All able-bodied young Americans should have to do two years of national service, he argues, either in the army or pursuing some other public good.

This book contains many sound ideas, such as the bar on gerrymandering, and some less sound, such as national service. But Mr Sabato does not want us to pick one or two of his suggestions. He wants to call a second constitutional convention to rethink the entire document bar the Bill of Rights. The current approach of piecemeal amendments is not working, he says. Very few pass, and many that are proposed are foolish: think of the amendment to ban flag-burning. No, what America needs is a grand meeting of clever and high-minded people to draw up a new, improved constitution better suited to the 21st century.

The arguments against this are old, but worth repeating. Despite its age, the American constitution has worked better than any other constitution in any country, as Mr Sabato admits. The men who wrote it were giants. Granted, their work could be improved on. And tinkering with it, one amendment at a time, is slow. But that is the point. Changing a constitution should be difficult. And the risks of a major re-write are huge. What is the chance that a fresh crew of framers will be as wise as the original ones? Sometimes radicalism is best kept in the classroom.