and successful presidential campaigns, which often signaled important changes in direction in our understanding of the Constitution by making sustained arguments about its meaning. In modern times, Franklin Roosevelt made an extensive argument, on the eve of the 1932 election, about why the Constitution needed to be understood in new ways amidst the crisis of the Great Depression, and then again in his infamous “court packing” crusade in his second term. A few years before FDR, Calvin Coolidge, who was not the “Silent Cal” of historical repute, argued vigorously against the Progressive Era idea that’s come to be known as the “living Constitution.” And the most prominent champion of that idea was Woodrow Wilson, who enjoys the dubious reputation of being the first president to criticize the Constitution openly.
Hayward points to the logic of judicial supremacy and the media's general apathy to such questions as the main reason for this abdication:
Both liberal and conservative candidates do themselves and the American people a disservice in reinforcing the idea of judicial supremacy — the idea that the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is, rather than belonging to all three coequal branches of government and, ultimately, to the people. Maybe we shouldn’t blame the candidates alone for this strange gap in our modern practices. The media doesn’t reflect much on the Constitution beyond self-interested particulars of the First Amendment. And most of the leading textbooks about the presidency contain little or no discussion of the constitutional context of the office, instead treating the president as just a grander variation of a corporate CEO.
Update: I sold Rick Santorum a little short. See his meditation on the relationship between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
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