Unlimited government: it's not Constitutional it's not effective it's not safe.(Cover Story)

It was typical summertime in Washington last July-temperature in the 90s, humidity in the 80s--yet the living was anything but easy. President Bush announced on prime-time television his nomination of Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court, and Congress and the entire capital city sprang briskly into action. The next morning, senators appeared before throngs of reporters to pronounce on the nominee's qualifications, pundits and interest-group spokespeople hit the TV studios with their spins and admonitions, and lobbyists buzzed about the implications for their favorite legislative causes. By dinnertime the first responders had laid down the parameters for the confirmation battle to come, and the nation had begun to take the measure of the young jurist.

Thus began another national debate over the contemporary meaning of our Constitution--conducted over the airwaves and Internet and in the op-ed pages, culminating in Senate hearings in September where Judge Roberts was lectured and quizzed on Supreme Court case law by senators reciting from cue cards. But in many ways it was the sheer alacrity of the initial response rather than the substance of the ensuing legal arguments that said the most about current Constitutional practice. For the highly orchestrated announcement and responses took place during a season when, for much of American history and by deliberate design, Congress and the White House would have been closed for business and Washington deserted.

Thomas Jefferson played the pivotal role in choosing the site for our national capital, and selected what was essentially a malarial swamp. He had been in Paris when the Constitution was drafted, and he was not much impressed by its parchment provisions for limited government. So--anticipating the old dictum that "no man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session"--Jefferson added a climatologic backstop. Long, miserable summers were to serve as a natural deterrent to the growth of our national apparatus.

Leaving the Constitution out in the cold

It worked beautifully for more than a century. Legislators, lobbyists, and executive officials fled the capital en masse most summers, right through the late 1920s--when air conditioning was introduced. With the deployment of that subversive technology, there began a notable expansion of the federal leviathan.

Only the Supreme Court has held to the old ways. Having arranged things so that they not only get the last word on policy issues that interest them, but do so on their own time, the justices still knock off for three months every summer. Humdrum politicians, however, now work more than they vacation from Independence Day through Labor Day. JFK described Washington as a town of northern charm and southern efficiency; it has since become more northern and more efficient.

The emergence of 24/7/52 legislating is one of many ways in which modern American government has become much busier and more businesslike than it used to be. While busyness is a virtue in most of life, the men who founded our nation would not have considered it advantageous to government. They carefully contrived a state that would be cumbersome and inefficient at getting its act together, with divided and contending powers both inside Washington and between Washington and the states, and a profusion of checks and balances throughout. They wanted government to be robust and decisive in a limited sphere, but also considered government a threat to freedom and happiness, and worried it would engross private society, property, commerce, and culture. "Government" said John Adams, "turns every contingency into an excuse for enhancing power in itself." "Government" said George Washington, "is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." And those were the Federalists.