Pileup.(The Talk of the Town)(constituting government)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 16-APR-07

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COPYRIGHT 2007 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Over the past few months, the constitution of the United States has been quietly amended. We're not talking here about the written, capital-"C" Constitution, which can't be changed on the sly, but about the constitution broadly understood: the rules and procedures by which our government is constituted. A lot of that constitution is outside the Constitution, notably when it comes to elections. The framers' document makes no mention of parties, primaries, or nominating conventions--understandably, as they hadn't been invented yet. Article II, Section 1, which is about "chusing the President," has plenty to say about electors' meeting "in their respective States," and making "a List of all the Persons voted for," and signing, certifying, and sealing their Lists before sending them on to "the Seat of the Government." But it says nothing about political campaigns, political parties, or nominating conventions--let alone about sound bites, thirty-second spots, bundled contributions, or independent expenditures, any one of which has more effect on who gets chusen than all the...

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