231 Year-Old Document Fails As Operating Manual, Leaving Trump in Power
Image Courtesy: USA Today

231 Year-Old Document Fails As Operating Manual, Leaving Trump in Power

I am as overwhelmed as anyone by the prescience and power of the American Constitution. It is worthy of accolades for its boldness, brilliance and vision and for its prescient guidance for a vibrant and caring society. But was ratified in 1788 and while a 231 year-old document may be a masterpiece of human thought, it is a disaster as a roadmap in the 21st Century.

21st Century life and deliberations in America are foreign to life and realities of 18th Century America. In spite of what President Trump may think, there were no airports in colonial times and communication was only as fast as a horse could travel. While the Constitution must continue to guide our relationships and our humanity, it must no longer serve as an omnipresent operating document laying out the operating manual for resolution of major and urgent matters. That’s just reality.

Specifically, the Constitution offers impeachment as a remedy when the President has gone seriously astray. But the requirements and steps for impeachment are torturously slow and seriously unworkable in the 21st Century. They are, today, as appropriate as calling a doctor for urgent surgery by messaging with horse and buggy.

We need urgently to identify and follow 21st Century modi operandi.

As we see today, following the steps and procedures embedded in the Constitution during an urgent crisis created by a contemporary president leads to months and months of painful and unbearably slow hearings and deliberations that may have made sense in 18th Century but which simply complicate and overwhelm the need to act deliberatively but with dispatch in our own times. Following the outlines and requirements for deliberations in the Constitution today governing impeachment is tantamount to ensuring that an errant president will escape the consequences of wrongdoing. We see that plainly today.

Failing, as we most certainly will today for want of acting appropriately but speedily, will be of unparalleled consequence. We cannot let this happen again. We owe it to our children and grandchildren.

Ari Socolow
Ari Socolow: Ari Socolow is the Chief Economist and Editor-in-Chief at BestCashCow. He is particularly interested in issues relating to bank transparency and the climate crisis. Since co-founding BestCashCow in 2005, Ari has been frequently cited in the media as an expert on local and national savings accounts, CD products, mortgage and loan products and credit card rewards products.

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