What do the following persons have in common? Two members of George Bush’s Cabinet: Nicholas Brady and Richard Thornburgh; three U.S. Senators: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Ernest Hollings and Nancy Kassebaum; two former Senators: J. William Fulbright and Charles Mathias; a Senator’s wife: Mrs. John D. Rockefeller IV; the Secretary of Defense for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and former president of the World Bank, Robert S. McNamara; President Kennedy’s Secretary of the Treasury and investment banker C. Douglas Dillon; and President Carter’s adviser on the SALT II Treaty, Lloyd Cutler.
The list is much longer, but these names suffice to indicate the power and prestige of the group. They are among 51 prominent Americans who were elected to a board of directors at an annual meeting held on December 16 at the Brookings Institution without any news coverage.
The formal name of this group is the Committee on the Constitutional System (CCS). It is colloquially known among its own members as the “parliamentary government group” because they are unhappy with our American Separation of Powers structure and want to change it to a European-style parliamentary process.
The discussion at this year’s annual meeting was definitely downbeat because of the 1988 election. CCS members believe that “divided government” (with a Republican President and a Democratic Congress) is a terrible problem, so bad, in fact that it calls for a complete change in the structure of our government.
However, the worst of CCS members is not that divided government won’t work, but that it will! They are afraid that George Bush, as a Washington-insider President, will make the system work, and the people will then see no reason to change it.
CCS members aggressively seek large-scale reforms in our constitutional structure and hope that a depression in the near future will create a favorable climate for these changes. They want to be ready to apply “radical reform” if the opportunity arises through a major economic crisis.
A main item of business a this annual meeting was the commissioning of what it calls a “debate book” to be used to educate the American public to support the changes CCS has already decided what we need. Here are some of the changes this group is determined to bring about.
CCS wants to change the terms of office so that all federal elected officials (President, Senator, Congressman) will be elected at the same time. CCS even wants to fix the ballot so that we would have to vote for all three as a single unit.
CCS wants to control campaign financing for Congressional elections by substituting taxpayer-financing.
CCS wants to repeal the 22nd Amendment which limits Presidents to two terms. At the same time, CCS wants to impose limits on the number of terms a member of Congress may serve.
CCS wants to abolish the Electoral College and substitute a straight national popular vote. CCS wants members of Congress to serve as electors.
CCS wants to “reform” national nominating conventions and delegate selection so that superdelegates can be named. CCS wants “bonus seats” to be filled by Congress and party officials.
CCS Wants to eliminate the two-thirds requirement for thee Senate to ratify treaties so that it will be easier for Presidents to make agreements with foreign powers. (Lloyd Cutler is still smarting over the refusal of the U.S. Senate to ratify Jimmy Carter’s SALT II Treaty.)
CCS is floating a plethora of off-the-wall notions, all of which would move us in the direction of a country controlled by a small elite group. These ideas include establishing a permanent, professional White House staff that an incoming President couldn’t fire, a “council of elders,” a ceremonial chief of state., and a mechanism to force the President to resign and to dissolve Congress when there is a “loss of public confidence.”
At this most recent meeting, CCS members appear to be facing the reality that Americans will never adopt these proposals if they can examine them one by one. For the first time, CCS members are discussing that, since “the whole system needs to be adjusted,” it would be “better” to call a new constitutional convention.
CCS members are now frankly using the issue of the federal budget deficit as a tool to promote their goal of structural changes in our constitutional government. CCS symposia in the coming months will proclaim that the deficit is “universally-recognized as the central issue of 1989,” that “divided government” is the culprit, and that CCS-style structural changes are the solution.
Those who believe in the continuing validity of the United States Constitution have been forewarned.
