Despite my regular concerns with the Philadelphia Inquirer (especially when I perceive anti-gun bias creeping into news reports), I'm a loyal subscriber, as I think a daily newspaper is a fundamentally important part of a civil society. I like the Inquirer's online presence, regular linking of blogs, and most of all, the fact that the editorial board provides a platform for alternative views.

This morning, I was delighted to see Glenn Reynolds' review of Larry Sabato's "A More Perfect Constitution: 23 Proposals to Revitalize Our Constitution and Make America a Fairer Country." Sabato wants to re-do, the Constitution, while Reynolds thinks (at the risk of simplifying) that we might be in danger of losing what we have, so we ought to try to preserve it:

are we desperate enough to dare a new Constitution?

I don't think so. There seems widespread agreement that the current system is bad, but no sign that we're desperate to change it. The next question is, should we be? That is, is our current system sufficiently dysfunctional that we'd be better off taking a chance on a new Constitutional Convention, as Sabato proposes, than continuing to operate under the current system?

That's a tougher question. Our current political system certainly appears dysfunctional, and it seems to have been captured, to a greater degree than in the past, by special-interest groups that place their own welfare ahead of the public good. As Sabato observes, the framers' "feared corruption has come in many stultifying forms, from extreme partisan gerrymandering to the unresponsiveness of the political system produced by ossification over the centuries."

Yet this raises another difficulty. The framers believed that no Constitution could protect a people who had fallen away from political virtue. If our political class is too lacking in virtue to make the current system work - a proposition I think Sabato would accept - then how likely is it that this same political class would produce a better system than the one we have now?

As Glenn puts it, "Perhaps we would be better cultivating political virtue first, and worrying about constitutional change later."

The reason the Constitution is in such disrepair is that it's been disregarded for so long by so many. I think any wholesale rewriting of it would only generate further disregarding and disrespect -- just the opposite of what Sabato intends.

Sabato lists and discusses seven of his proposals here; and I'm not sure that them (such as the line-item veto) couldn't simply be enacted into law.

It was great to see this review in the Inquirer!

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds links the Inquirer review and the Sabato book.