This dire state of affairs has been brought about to a large degree by our current system’s inability to handle the building pressures of political polarization and divisiveness. We have been living under a government that has rewarded the severest type of obstructionism with a spasm of extremist populism that now has the run of the place.

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You only want a constitutional convention when you reach a crisis point. Welcome to now.

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What should be the agenda of this convention? I’d say sufficient evidence has accumulated against the presidential system and in favor of a parliamentary system. The presidential system was always suspect as an experimental, rickety affair whose success depended on there being no political parties, or nonideological parties willing to work together. That time is long gone and history now lets us lay the competing systems side by side for comparison. The parliamentary model has its own flaws, but on balance it comes out ahead.

And what about the risk of letting the crazies write the rules? Again, the crazies are already writing the rules, and there are two possible outcomes at this point. Either they will succeed and consolidate power in the wreckage of our current system, or they will falter, fail and fall.