Editor's Letter: Reform, hostility, and public debate

last updated 8 January 2015

What would the Founding Fathers do? It’s tempting to play that game as we watch the nation’s politicians grapple with a powerful, contentious issue such as health-care reform. If the Founders were here today, would they offer half-baked legislation or engender the kind of hostility that marks so much recent public debate?

When the best and brightest convened in Philadelphia in 1787 to revise their recent flop—the Articles of Confederation—they produced a durable Constitution, along with some vicious squabbling and a bounty of bad ideas. For a chief executive, Elbridge Gerry proposed a three-man council, with each member representing a different part of the country. (Given Gerry’s identification with the gerrymander, by which election districts are drawn to exploit partisan advantage, the three regions might have necessitated some highly irregular lines.) More than a few powdered wigs in attendance thought the presidency should be a lifetime appointment, preferably hereditary. Others sought to scuttle any proposal, regardless of merit, if it diminished their own state’s power. The infighting became so parochial and low that George Washington told Alexander Hamilton that he regretted “having had any agency” in bringing the convention together. As for Hamilton, biographer Ron Chernow notes that he “blundered” into proposing the creation of an American monarch, which his enemies used against him forever after. Such faults help humanize the Founders for us. And it’s worth noting that even the brilliant Hamilton is bested by our contemporary pols in at least one respect: His speech proposing a monarchy lasted an astonishing six hours. Our representatives can make fools of themselves in a fraction of the time.