Needed: major changes in Government—but not constitutional surgery "Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time. "
—Mark Twain If there is one political belief that Americans cherish as an article of faith, it is the belief that their system of constitutional Government is the best ever devised by the mind of man. Yet an increasing number of citizens seem to share a contradictory view—that the system is not working. The evidence takes diverse forms. There are widespread demands for several differing constitutional amendments. And after the usual blizzard of declarations that every ballot is crucial, only 53% of the eligible voters went to the polls last November, the fifth voting decline in a row.
Opinion polls, the nation's favorite medium of public confession, document the erosion of Americans' faith in their system. Pollster Louis Harris has been asking over the years how many citizens believe in a series of statements like, "The people running the country don't really care what happens to you."
The number who subscribe to this "index of alienation" has climbed steadily, from 29% in 1966 to 44% in 1972 to 58% today. The University of Michigan's Center for Political Studies asks opinions on similarly glum statements: "The Government is pretty much run by a few big interests ... Quite a few of the people running the Government don't seem to know what they're doing ..." The alienated again rise sharply, from 19% in 1964 to almost 60% today.
Just as Oscar Wilde once remarked that the youth of America is its oldest tradition, much the same could be said of complaints about the failings of the U.S. political system. George Washington grumbled that "the stupor, or listlessness with which our public measures seem to be pervaded, is, to me, matter of deep regret." Through all the criticism, the mere fact that the system has survived more than two centuries of turbulent change is the strongest possible evidence of its solidity. While the American way of Government has repeatedly stood accused of inefficiency, the best defense is that it was not designed for efficiency but for accommodation and consensus. That, indeed, is the key to its survival.