California’s long and complicated constitution – and the
governing dysfunction it promotes – is bad. But Californians who care about
such things have been able to take comfort in the idea that ours is not the
most broken constitution in the country.
Thank God
for Alabama.
But there’s
news there.
Democrats
in the Alabama legislature are pushing for a referendum asking voters whether
they want to tear up that state’s 1901 constitution – a document longer than
California’s massive constitution – and write a new one.
It’s a bad
sign when Alabama political elites are more willing to confront their
constitutional problems than those in California. Powers-that-be have dismissed
the notion of top-to-bottom constitutional reform as a pipe dream.
Which means California may soon be
the country’s undisputed leader in constitutional failure.