by Annabel Park
Note: A shortened version of this speech for delivered at conconcon.org which took place at Harvard Law School, 9/24-25.
I'd like to raise some questions designed to make us self-conscious. In honor of one of my favorite political figures in the last century, Vice Admiral James Stockdale, who at the 1992 Vice Presidential debate asked, "Who am I and what am I doing here?" I'm going to ask: Who are we and what are we doing here?
I want to ask you all something. How many of you believe that our government is not broken? Almost all of us agree that it is. So, yes, we are here in recognition of this terrible truth and we want to do something.
I'm going to risk having Larry Lessig getting mad at me and venture to say that I think we have been enticed here under false pretenses.
On the official invitation and website, we are here to talk about the “advisability and feasibility of an Article V constitutional convention co-chaired by Mark Meckler of the Tea Party and Larry Lessig of Fix Congress First.”
Yes, that is true. But I think there is another more hidden reason we are here. We are here to find out if we can actually talk to each other at all about anything.
And not just talk to each other, but do it as fellow Americans with civility and reason. I think most of us will end up doing our best to be civil and reasonable. In part because we like Larry and Mark and we would hate for them to feel like they've failed. But also because deep down, we want to believe that it is possible. We want to believe in We the People.
This is exactly what drives me, and the Coffee Party movement.
The reason that our political process is broken is not necessarily just legal, but it's also cultural, psychological and cognitive.
What we really need to talk about is polarization. Why are we so polarized? Why is our political discourse dominated by so much anger, hatred and fear?
There is no doubt that fear dominates our political discourse. There is fear dominating our discussion this weekend. Consider how much we’ve focused on the fear of the runaway convention. There are two sessions devoted to the fear of a runaway convention. Imagine if we could start to inject some hope into our conversation so that we are asking ourselves what a more perfect union would look like if we redesigned it?
It seems to me that what we are doing here is really confronting what truly scares us: our political shadow, the political “other.”
Instead of tackling this fear head-on, perhaps Mark and Larry are trying to get us to play another game. Let's play, "What about a constitutional convention?" It's kind of like couples therapy. Instead of spending time blaming each other for a failing marriage, let's go on a date and get to know each other again.
I want to make a prediction to be realized next week. Larry and Mark will get emails saying how great this event was along the lines of "I don't know about a real convention, but I sure enjoyed talking to people with diverse view points. It was refreshing! It gives me hope for the future of our country. Thank you, Larry and Mark." And Mark and Larry will feel like they'd accomplished something and they should.
They should open up a bottle of champagne to celebrate the fact that we’ve all a successful first date and some of us are feelings some hope that we can talk about our differences respectfully.
Seriously. What I am getting at is this: We are trying to answer by gathering a very important question in our politics today. Do we like each other? Do we respect each other? Do we care about each other? Are we afraid of each other? Do we want to stay together? Do we want to continue being in a relationship? What do we have in common? Do we share core values and goals?
And, what are the political implications in the answers that we offer to these questions?
It seems to me that like a marriage or any relationship, it's difficult to maintain a democratic process if we can't talk to each other and we don't actually respect, like or care about each other. The big concern that I have that keeps me up at nights is that maybe "we are not just that into each other" as they say in the dating world. That is, we don't currently have the essential social elements that can support a real and robust democracy.
I think you can agree with me that we need to do something about this. I have an idea and proposal that I want to throw out there. I think we need to go on more "civic" dates. We can see this event as the first one.
More specifically, I want to propose that we work on doing some mock constitutional conventions. Let’s take some of the ideas proposed about how and see if we can test it out. And let people geek out over these sometimes boring, sometimes fascinating questions that come up.
Having mock conventions would be like the "dates" that a therapist may prescribe. But they are not just any dates in which we get to know each other. We are going on something like “hiking dates” in which we are getting exercise as well as really getting to know each other. Let's get used to talking and asking big and important questions about the nature and state of our social contract.
Let’s get empirical in our approach to thinking through the question of the advisability and feasibility of a constitutional convention. I say this because I asked Larry Lessig and Mark McKinnon to co-chair one at the Coffee Party convention exactly a year ago in Justice Brennan’s home town of Louisville, KY. It was a phenomenal for those of us who participated and Larry said something like, “It’s as if the participants where exercising a muscle that they didn’t know they had or had been atrophying for years.”
It may just turn out, as they say in the dating world, that we are just not that into each other and the convention will turn out to be the second date that made all of us say, “I have proof now! They’re all just crazy and stupid.”
There is very little that we can assume about our politics right now. I mean seriously, after citizens united, I don’t know what “we the people” means anymore. But, it is worth the risk. As my mom would say, you won’t know if you like him until you get to know him.
I don't want to be too hopeful on the first date since we are only half way through it, but I think it's going really well. So, I would like for us to move to organizing a mock constitutional convention in the not-too-distant future. Perhaps a year from now. In Philadelphia, on Sept 17th, which is, as you know, Constitution Day.
Let's start training together for what may turn out to be the Olympics of civic engagement: an actual Constitutional Convention.
Thank you.
