History Teaches That Constitutional Reforms Come In Waves

There’s a lot wrong with America’s political system, and lots of debate about ways to fix it – overhauling our broken campaign finance system, for instance, or setting national standards to protect voting rights. Liberals wring their hands over the difficulty of getting legislation on such changes through Congress, citing gridlock and partisanship as reasons those kinds of reforms are doomed. Amending the Constitution seems even more impossible.

But what if the opposite is true? What if it turns out that it’s gridlock and partisanship that open a path for constitutional reform?