cover image The Genius of America: How the Constitution Saved Our Country and Why It Can Again

The Genius of America: How the Constitution Saved Our Country and Why It Can Again

Eric Lane, Michael Oreskes, . . Bloomsbury, $22.95 (296pp) ISBN 978-1-59691-199-4

Oreskes, executive editor of the International Herald Tribune , and Eric Lane, a Hofstra law professor, offer a pithy and insightful analysis of the historical development of the Constitution, emphasizing the spirit of compromise that informed the deliberations in the hot Philadelphia summer of 1787. The authors are equally adept at demonstrating the threat that today’s deep partisan fissures pose to the founders’ vision of constitutional government. To Lane and Oreskes the Constitution’s chief virtue is the intricate system of checks and balances that constrains the tendency of people, whether as majorities or minorities, to impose their own self-interest on others. They argue that the recent rise of partisanship has eroded the underpinnings of the constitutional system; Congress has forgone its oversight responsibilities; the executive branch claims extraordinary powers; and the will to make political compromises is dead. But the authors don’t sufficiently develop suggestions for how to reinvigorate the constitutional system of checks and balances. Oreskes and Lane are superb at explaining underlying principles of governance embedded in the Constitution; readers will find their book provocative, but may be left unconvinced that a meaningful correction is within easy reach. (Oct.)