Talking Politics

David talks to Gary Gerstle about the history of the United States Constitution and its current role in American political life. Is it still fit for purpose in the twenty-first century and what could be done to change it?“American democracy is stuck, but because of the Constitution it also has a history of getting stuck.”Talking Points:The Constitution not only divided power between the federal government and the states; it also gave each level of governance a different theory of power.The Constitution strengthened the power of the central state—this was necessary for the fledgling country to take on larger challenges.But Americans were wary about centralized power. Their solution was the enumeration of powers: the federal government would only have those powers explicitly stated in the Constitution.Non-enumerated powers remained in the hands of the states, which have, historically, legislated far more intrusively than the federal government.The biggest changes to the Constitution are not