JUDGING THE SUCCESS OF THE CONSTITUTION (COMMENT). In a comment to yesterday’s post on the success of the Consitution, Dick Weisfelder asked: “What are your measures of success?
I would argue that from the outset it had serious flaws….”
I had in mind as my measure of success the fact that the Constitution has lasted over 225 years. At the time it was written, there were few examples of republics that had lasted a long time and few examples of a republic that covered as large a geographic area as the United States did.
On reflection, I realize that this may seem a very low bar, but I think that writing a Constitution that has lasted this long is a remarkable accomplishment and one that surpassed what the framers would have expected.