America’s so-called democracy is under serious strain these days. And not just because of the November election and its aftermath. The cracks and tensions in our democracy have been building for a long time. But some, including me, fear that the system may soon be stressed to the breaking point.

Since this summer clearly has the potential to be a long, hot one for our country, we thought we’d start out the season with a deeper look at Democracy in America. We’ve done a host of episodes over the years on the topic of democracy. We've discussed Corporations and the Future of Democracy with former Senator Russ Feingold. We've examined Democracy in Crisis with Francis Fukuyama. We’ve asked whether democracy is a universal value, with Larry Diamond. We’ve delved into The Radical Democracy Movement, John’s Dewey’s ideal of democracy, and the philosophy of John Rawls. We’ve discussed mandatory voting, the two-party system and much more.

Nor are we done examining the topic. Soon we will examine Jurgen Habermas’s vision of democracy. Because we love democracy and suspect that you do too, we invite you to take a deep dive with us into the problems and prospects of Democracy in America. To help you get started, I thought I’d offer a few thoughts of my own.

我已经对美国宪法产生了深深的怀疑。不像其他人，他们倾向于把我们政治的失调状态归咎于所谓的“外部因素”——比如金钱在政治中的作用，或者是我们的懦弱和超级党派主义，或者是我们选举出来的官员，或者是美国选民的懒惰和愚蠢——我倾向于认为失调的种子是由宪法本身建立在我们制度的结构中。

Don’t get me wrong, in many ways our constitution is a glorious document. Its protection of individual liberties is something I deeply cherish and applaud. But at the core of our constitution are many very problematic political mechaniss and many deeply problematic assumptions about the people in relation to the state.

Despite its protections of individual liberty, our constitution is basically an infantilizing document. That’s because our Founding Fathers, in their supposedly infinite and unquestionable wisdom, fundamentally believed that the citizens, considered as a cooperate body, are hardly fit for effective and mature political agency. Partly as a consequence, they not only designed a constitution that hardly relies on the mature and effective agency of the citizens, but one that makes such agency much harder to develop and foster.

Think of the election of Donald Trump. One often hears it said that Trump is who “the American People” elected. But this is simply not true, on any reasonable way of understanding what the will of the American People amounts to. After all, President Trump was elected not by a majority or even a plurality of those of our fellow citizens who bothered to vote. He was elected by the electoral college. Whether you should approve or disapprove of the Electoral College –I myself happen to strongly disapprove—is not the issue here. The point is that the Founding Fathers never intended that the Electoral College be a measure of the popular will. Indeed, they explicitly designed it so that it wouldoverride广受欢迎的。这正是在唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)当选总统时发生的事情。这就是为什么说我们人民选了特朗普是错误的。我们没有这样做。

It’s not my aim, though, to question the legitimacy of Trump here —thoughI have done that elsewhere. My present point is just that, however you feel about the election of President Trump, by explicit constitutional design there is now almost nothing that we the people can do about it. In one way, this makes perfect sense. Since the president is not elected by the people, but by the electoral college, there is no obvious reason why he should be directly answerable to the popular will. That is why there are almost no mechanisms by which the people at large may hold him accountable. There are no provisions for recall elections in our constitution, as there are in many state constitutions. There are no provisions for a vote of no confidence, as there are in parliamentary systems. In fact, except for the highly cumbersome mechanism of impeachment, there is no way at all to dissolve a problematic government. Some think that the president cannot even be indicted for a crime, like murder or treason, during his term in office.

这并不是说，绝对没有任何机制可以让一旦当选的总统承担责任。毕竟，在我们的制度中有持续的选举。下一次中期选举总是指日可待。幸运的是，总统每四年都要参加改选。但是，选举并没有你想象的那样赋予人民权力，也没有你想象的那样有效地作为民主问责的手段。想想两党对众议院选区的不公正划分——这是该制度的一个违宪怪癖。或者想想这样一个事实:一次只有三分之一的参议院需要重新选举——这是一个宪法上的怪癖。但不要让我从参议院开始，这是绝对令人憎恶的，是对民主的完全侮辱，因为只有16%的美国选民选择了参议院的50%。关键是，虽然选举很重要，但它不是万能的。事实上，在我们的制度中，选举是非常不完善的民主问责机制，还有很多其他原因。

我相信我们18世纪的宪法已经过时了。但问题不只是宪法本身。这也是宪法结构与宪法之外的发展相互作用的方式——比如极端党派之争的出现，日益加剧的经济不平等，以及总统职位演变成我所说的魅力办公室。

以极端的党派之争和魅力十足的总统任期为例。我们的开国元勋们没有预料到这两件事。但一旦我们拥有了这些东西，并将它们与我们的宪法安排混合在一起，潜在的灾难就潜伏着。这是因为开国元勋们错误地假设，政府的每一个分支都将如此嫉妒自己的特权，以至于仅这一点就可以确保他们设计的精密的制衡体系的有力运行。但他们没有预见到的是，当总统成为一个有魅力的领导人，国会成为一个党派之争激烈的地方，制度上的嫉妒将不再足以防范两者结合带来的最坏后果。而我们现在所看到的正是强烈的党派之争和魅力十足的总统所带来的最糟糕的影响。正因为如此，可能暗地里希望特朗普下台的共和党参议员和国会议员，不能仅仅出于制度上的嫉妒，站出来对抗他。

Though the president is no king, the Founders’ distrust of the people means that both the President, and the government at large, are largely insulated from the will of the people. And that is part of the reason that Americans have grown accustomed to being infantilized political agents. We accept that it is right and good that we the people have precious few means by which to affect the government and its actions. One sign of this acceptance is that 45% of Americans think that the constitution was divinely inspired. Since we tend to think the Founders were divinely inspired, we tend to think of their wisdom as beyond reproach. At some point, we are going to have to wake up and come to grips with how radically inadequate our constitutional arrangements are.

这部宪法产生于一个特定的时代和背景。这是一组有时间限制的问题的解决方案。在我看来，杰斐逊坚持宪法应该有一个19年的日落条款，以免后代受制于过去的安排，这是正确的。通过忽视他的建议，让我们的宪法变得极其难以修改，开国元勋们可能使自由工业的北方和蓄奴农业的南方之间暂时而脆弱的联盟成为可能。但是，正如我们在内战中几乎不可避免的暴力和叛乱的爆发中看到了他们的宪法设计的局限性一样，在我们继续努力应对特朗普这个复杂现实的过程中，可能也会再次陷入困境。这场斗争可能不会像南北战争那样让我们产生很深的分歧，但很可能一旦问题确定，我们将需要做我们在南北战争后所做的事情——评估我们极度不完善的宪法，并从其中添加或删除有助于建立一个更完美的联邦的条款。