It all just fits in with a theory I’ve got: Obama is Bush. Just look at the parallels. Bush was a divisive president who barely got re-elected against a flip-flopper from Massachusetts and disastrously mishandled foreign policy (the major issue of his presidency). Obama is a divisive president who barely got re-elected against a flip-flopper from Massachusetts and disastrously mishandled economic policy (the major issue of his presidency). Bush was actually quite willing to act like a member of the other party in the realm of economics (the Medicare expansion). Obama is actually quite willing to act like a member of the other party in the realm of foreign policy (the Arab Spring, which was based on the neoconservative premise that spreading democracy is a desirable aim of American foreign policy). Obama occasionally pays lip service to his party’s foreign policy views, just as Bush sometimes paid lip service to his party’s economic views (the Bush tax cuts). Likewise, both Bush and Obama played up their respective side in the culture war to political advantage. I hope Obama ends the same way Bush did and I hope the 70-year-old Democratic nominee in 2016 is as successful as the 70-year-old Republican nominee in 2008. I also hope for a better President who can end the interminable culture war and bring to an end the failed interventionist foreign and economy policies that the Bush and Obama administrations supported so strongly. More likely, we’ll just get more of the same and our country will continue its decline.

I think the framers understood that these requirements needed to be enshrined in the Constitution because not everyone will follow them out of respect.

Seidman: “As the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken.”

He needs to reread what James Madison had to say about factions in Federalist #10. I think Madison’s observations are astute in that they capture the reality of the tension between liberty and unified political action.

So, as far as I can see, it really dosen’t matter what Professor Whosis thinks of it. And “supporting” the constitution means acceding to the judgment however wise, prudent, or fair we think it, until such time that the issue reappears in the courts. Just as we always have. All of us.

But “supporting the constitution” does not mean ceasing to publicly point out that any such court decision remains unwise, imprudent, or unfair for any reason that may suit us. Nor does it mean coming to some definitive bipartisan agreement about any such issue.

It means doing what we have been doing since 1789 and there is no serious indication that we are going to be doing anything else.