Here's Where It Gets Interesting - The Constitution in Jeopardy with Russ Feingold

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

On today’s episode of Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon welcomes former Senator Russ Feingold to the show. Russ is a three-term senator from Wisconsin and his new book, The Constitution in Jeopardy, talks about Constitutional evolution; how the framers built in mechanisms to change it when necessary. One of those mechanisms is the Constitutional Convention–a convention that the United States has never held. What might a convention change, and what are the dangers of it? Could a convention gut the Constitution and threaten democracy? What would a productive and successful Constitutional Convention look like? Special thanks to our guest, Russ Feingold, for joining us today. You can order a copy of The Constitution in Jeopardy here. Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Guest: Russ Feingold Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. Welcome. So happy that you're joining me today. I am speaking with Russ Feingold. If you are from Wisconsin, you may recognize his name as a three-term senator from your state. And he now has a new book out called The Constitution in Jeopardy. And in this conversation, we are going to talk all about constitutional conventions, how to change the Constitution, what needs to change about the Constitution, what doesn't. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. I am very excited to be joined today by my neighbor, Russ Feingold. Thank you for being here.

My pleasure. And when I say neighbor, I mean he lives in a neighboring state, the neighboring state of Wisconsin. Which, of course, if I were a Vikings fan, I would have to get a dig in about the Packers. But I'm not. I don't care about football. So you can go ahead. Okay, good. You can go ahead and have your Packers fandom.

Because it can get kind of rough Packers fandom. It can get kind of rough. It can. That cross-border rivalry can be a little rampageous. I'm really grateful for your time today. And I'm so excited to talk about an issue that people who listen to this podcast and people who follow me care a lot about, which is about the Constitution. So first of all, tell us a little bit about your background. For people who don't know the name Russ Feingold, who are you? Well, Sharon, thank you for having me on your podcast. And we do share that some people call it a lake, but it's really an ocean, Lake Superior. So it's a pleasure to be with a fellow Midwesterner. So, you know, my family

came here over a hundred years ago to Janesville, Wisconsin from the East Coast. And I was brought up in the public schools in Janesville. I went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Yes, I'm a Badger, not a Gopher. And then I got a couple law degrees. But most of my career, I was an elected official, a legislator, 10 years as a state senator in the Wisconsin State Senate, and then 18 years as a United States senator representing the state of Wisconsin until 2010. And since then, I've mostly been teaching law, but I also was an envoy to Africa on peace negotiations for President Obama. And now I am the president of something called the American Constitution Society, which is an organization that's trying to stand up for democracy and the rule of law,

especially against the threats that are coming from the far right in the United States. So this question of what kind of a constitutional change we might have is of great importance to me, but also to our organization and to our country. to me, but also to our organization and to our country. I have a lot of thoughts about the beloved constitution. There's a lot to love about it, obviously. I'm not somebody who's like, just throw the whole thing out, scrap it. That's not my perspective.

I think there's a lot that we should keep, but I do think that there are absolutely some situations that are occurring today that there was absolutely no way for the framers to anticipate. in Philadelphia in 1787 to be like, someday algorithms will do the following things. Someday we might have considerable threat from A, B, and C. So in their wisdom, they put multiple ways to change the constitution. Should it ever be needed, they inserted multiple ways to change it. should it ever be needed, they inserted multiple ways to change it, thinking to themselves, well, one way isn't enough because what if things go awry with the one main way that we're thinking about the Constitution being amended? What if things go awry with Congress? We might need a fail safe. We might need an additional way to be able to change the Constitution because we are not smart enough to predict hundreds of years into the future, and no humans are. So for anybody who is new to this type of conversation, fill us in, if you wouldn't mind, on the different ways that the framers envisioned us being able to change the Constitution if the situation ever arose.

Well, Sharon, you said that all just perfectly. You maybe have a better joke about the framers than I do. The one I like to say is that they were really no good or very effective when it came to climate change. They just didn't get it. But I like the algorithm thing. And it's funny, you said the thing about 100 years from now, almost exactly the way that George Washington said at the Constitutional Convention. He had this draft of the Constitution, and he said basically what you said, which is, we can't imagine that we are smarter or more effective or able to understand things in future generations. So the only reason I'm going to support this thing is so there's a mechanism to change the Constitution. And that is what is

embodied in Article 5 of the Constitution. A lot of people know about Article 1, which is where Congress's powers are. Article 2 is where the President's powers are. Article 3 is where the judiciary is created. But very few people are aware of Article 5. And yes, they did come down in the end on a compromise. There are two ways to change the Constitution. The one that most of us know about hasn't happened that often, but it's with Congress starting it. Two-thirds of both houses have to pass the identical proposal, then they send it to the states, and then three-quarters of the states have to ratify it. That's how we've gotten to the 27, or some would say 28, amendments that we already have. The other mechanism, though,

allows for two-thirds of the states to basically petition the Congress saying, we want a constitutional convention. We want a chance to kind of look at this whole thing or do this or do that, not on just one topic necessarily, but just we want a convention. And the way that my co-author and I have our book, Constitution in Jeopardy, Peter Prindle and I read this, is that the framers intended no limit at all on what might come up at that convention. So that's one of the questions and one of the dangers. But this way of doing it, as you well know, has never happened. It's come close, like one state short, two states short, but we've never had that convention. And one of the reasons is there are no rules for it in the Constitution. We have no idea how would delegates be selected, what triggers,

how you count the petitions, how would the convention work. And so this is why Peter Prindle and I wrote this book, because we were very worried that without those rules, this could lead to danger. And there is a great danger, and particularly on the right, there's a group led by something called the Convention of the States. We're trying sort of an end-run approach to calling a convention that could gut the Constitution and take it to a very far right version of what we have now. I'm with you. I don't want to just throw out the Constitution. There are things that need to be fixed, definitely. But the idea of throwing it out for some very, very small group of people in the country dominating our system of government is a frightening prospect.

Totally. And these are some of the questions that I get asked a lot when people say, do you think we should have a constitutional convention? My answer is almost always yes, but. Yes, but. I am concerned about the rules. I'm concerned about who would get to attend. I'm not necessarily concerned about some of the issues we could address.

I feel like there could be a lot of very positive change that could potentially come out of it. But how the delegates would be selected, that is top of mind for me. I'm personally not in favor of sending state legislatures as the delegates to this proposed constitutional convention because so many state legislatures are wildly gerrymandered to the point where they are not actually representative of the views of the people goals that the gerrymandered district wanted to achieve, but they're not representative of the people of Wisconsin at large or the people of Minnesota at large. They're representative of just this, like, our desired goal as a legislature that is tilted in favor of one party or another. Absolutely. That is the problem here. So when you say, yes, but, actually what we would say is not until Article V of the Constitution has changed. So we think a constitutional amendment has to be made to change the way this is done.

Because what you just said is the key. The way the Convention of the States is set up is they are going to use these gerrymandered legislatures. They're already training state legislators. They had representatives in 2016. They're going to do it again this August in Williamsburg, where they have like 100 state legislators from every state who come and they're trained in trying to figure out how to do a convention like this. And the way they do it is by, as you say, having very far right representatives. So yes, Wisconsin is a mixed state. We have a

Democratic governor, Democratic attorney general, Democratic lieutenant governor. Now there's a progressive majority in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, but our legislature is far to the right. And why is that? Because they've used gerrymandering to take away the right of the people of the state to have fair representation. But they are the ones under the current effort that's being made who would run this convention. The governor doesn't get to have any say in it. The Supreme Court doesn't get to have any say in it. And this is being replicated all over. So we know what they're going to try to do, Sharon. They had this mock convention in 2016. And they said, this is the way we're going to vote. It's not even going to be all the delegates vote. One vote per state.

So Montana gets the same vote as New York. And we know what that means. It's like the Electoral College. It's incredibly malapportioned. And then when it comes time to actually vote, they showed us what they want to do. And their favorite thing, Sharon, and this is where it gets back to your point about malapportioned legislatures dominating. They want a thing, I like to call it the John C. Calhoun rule, which goes back to the idea of some of the South thought that if one state didn't like a law,

a federal law, they could just ignore it or they can nullify it. They say that if 30 state legislators don't like anything Congress does or anything the administrative agencies does, they can overrule it. So they'd be eviscerating the federal government and the majority of the states. Again, it was one state at a time voted that way. So we know what they want to do. These are their big priorities, really taking away the very thing that led to the Constitutional Convention in the first place. really taking away the very thing that led to the Constitutional Convention in the first place. The Articles of Confederation were a complete bust. The country couldn't even be governed for a number of years. And so this is why we have a constitution. They want to take us back

to this thing where we couldn't have cooperation between 50 states. And that's not going to work in a country this big. That's a great point that we quickly abandoned the Articles of Confederation. They were like, you know what, this does not work. We all need to get to Philadelphia so we can redo these. They knew that some people were going to be like, no, we can't throw them out. Let's just amend. Let's just change. So in some cases, people who were lured to Philadelphia thinking we're just going to fix them out. Let's just amend. Let's just change. So in some cases, people who were lured to Philadelphia thinking we're just going to fix them up. And when they got there, they were like, they got to go. The whole thing, scrap it all. We cannot run a country with a confederation

of states. This confederation of states is not a country. It cannot be governed in the way that it's set up right now. For example, under the Articles of Confederation, there was no Bill of Rights. Nobody wants to go back to that, but that is exactly what going back to a confederation of states where the states have all the power and the federal government basically does nothing except, I mean, Lord only knows what, welcome foreign dignitaries, have a parade. I don't know. I don't know what exactly what they would do, but it didn't work before. And there's absolutely no reason to believe it would work now. That's right. And think about it. It's like, not only would it not work back then,

it didn't work back then when we were sort of protected by these oceans and people couldn't mess with us. Now they can mess with us in a half a second. And to not have that kind of coordination is insanity. But one of the problems with it, of course, was that the Articles of Confederation required that every single state agree to any change, any amendment. So there never was an amendment because apparently Rhode Island voted no on all the things. It couldn't be fixed. They were not feeling it. They were like, we're also not going to your constitutional convention.

We're not going to that either. We're not doing any of these things. Yeah. The idea that one state could hold up any amount of progress for the entire rest of the country. That's not democratic. No. In fact, that's a really good point because you were saying the thing that really matters is they're trying to do with the state control.

The first thing that they put in that constitution were not the words, we the states. They said, we the people. And so this was a document, as you said, where the people as a whole, not just through their legislatures, could create it or change it, and not just by state legislatures. Okay. If you had your druthers, Russ, and we could get together a real constitutional convention with real rules that were legit, that we were all like, yeah, I feel good about this. What topics would you like to tackle? What would you like to see adjusted? Well, the first thing is I wouldn't take a chance of doing it under the current rules.

As I said, I want to be clear about that. But if we were able to change the rules, and we have in the book some ideas about how you could do that and make it more democratic. I've been looking at this topic for almost 10 years, even before Peter and I decided to write the book. And several things seem to me to be clearly flaws in the Constitution that probably need a constitutional amendment. One is the electoral college is really a joke. We've ended up with two presidents who didn't have the majority of votes, and we need to get to a popular vote mechanism, and that could be done by a constitutional amendment that could be done at a convention or by Congress. Secondly, there is no actual right

to vote in the Constitution. I think we need a provision that makes it very clear that any attempt to try to diminish somebody's right to vote is wrong. That needs to be in the founding document. Third, we kind of alluded to this earlier, almost every modern country, they've got some kind of a right to a clean environment. And we don't have that kind of a provision in our Constitution. And so those are three things. There are many others, I think, but those are the kinds of things either Congress could do this, or if there was a legitimate new way to amend the Constitution, we should do it. And we need to do it because, yes, I'm worried about a convention. But Sharon, our Constitution is the hardest Constitution in the world to amend. It's only been amended 17 times since the Bill of Rights.

And that's because it's so hard to do. And so what you have now is this sort of backlog of things that really should have been fixed a long time ago, but it's so darn hard, especially in a partisan environment. But it's like in Ulysses, Scylla, and Charybdis. I mean, if you go to the convention instead, you're going to end up with something that's even worse. So that's why we need new rules. And that's a hard thing to do. We've got to somehow get a consensus, a bipartisan agreement, that something has to be done or

this Constitution is just going to dive its own way. Constitutions need to be amended and fixed. One of the things that I think needs to be changed about the Constitution is the entire election process. Just all of it. All the aspects of it. process. Just all of it, all the aspects of it. The system that we currently use is not even a tiny resemblance of what the framers intended. Again, that's assuming that what the framers intended is the ultimate arbiter for us. Like even if we say, yes, what they wanted goes.

Some people feel like who cares what they wanted? We should have what we wanted. We, you know, like we should have what we want. Who cares what they want? That's one view. But assuming your view is, okay, let's stick to the ultimate intent of the framers. There is no way that you can make a case that our current system of electing a president resembles what the framers intended. There were not massively powerful political parties in 1787. There were not huge money front raising systems where each candidate spends over $1 billion, over $2 billion trying to win the presidency. The framers never foresaw that. They didn't foresee a scenario in which people would campaign for president for 18 to 24 months. That is also absurd.

And the process by which we elect presidents has become, in my view, so exhausting, so demoralizing, so demeaning to candidates, so demeaning to candidates' families, that number one, it scares away really, really good people from running for office because we have created the conditions under which almost nobody is willing to put themselves in harm's way in that way. I couldn't be the subject of a 24-hour news channel. I don't want to watch myself get hated on 24-7 for years. Most people don't have that kind of desire, right? So there are good people with smart people with good ideas, good moral character, people who really have a lot to offer, who avoid throwing their hat in the ring because of those conditions. Secondly, it makes the average citizen so exhausted by the process that they completely unplug from engaging in democracy because they just cannot handle two years of the level of vitriol and the level of sustained attention that it

requires. To many people, it just seems like it's not even worth it. I'm not even going to try. We are the only democracy in the world with this kind of process. The rest of these democracies are like, listen, I'm going to give you that six weeks. You got six weeks to make your case. And then we're going to have an election. So to me, those are some of my really big issues that I think the current election system actually decreases democracy in the United States, which I don't think the framers would have approved of the system we have now. That's right.

Actually, the framers, particularly James Madison the system we have now. That's right. I mean, actually, the framers, particularly James Madison and the people that created the Senate, didn't believe in political parties. And they wanted the Senate the way it was so that it wouldn't involve political parties. I don't think political parties are wrong. But I think your description of what has happened is right to the point where people are just grossed out by this. Yes. And the people that are left to play are power hungry people who are willing to lie and accept nonsense that they know to be nonsense for power and power's sake rather than for their fellow men and fellow women. And, you know, I got to be honest with you.

I hate saying this because I want a lot of young people to run for office. I know me very well. I don't know that I would have wanted to go into this business if it was like this, because, you know, I had a wonderful career. 10 years in the state Senate, 18 years in the U.S. Senate. I had my privacy. Nobody ever did anything to my kids or threatened them or made me feel particularly threatened. I did 1,200 listening sessions around Wisconsin in every county every year, you know, total of 1,272 counties. And I felt so good about it. It was direct democracy. I think people would have to think twice about exposing themselves to that kind of a situation now.

I think people would have to think twice about exposing themselves to that kind of a situation now. And it's a great tragedy because, as you say, good people, sort of well-rounded people, people that would see this as part of their life, but not their whole life, and would care about their friends and family, they're going to be very discouraged from doing this. So it makes me feel really bad at this point in my life because I work in the American Constitution Society with all these wonderful young people who are still interested in running for office. But I'm so worried about what it means for them personally. So, you know, actually, under the current Constitution, there are a lot of ways to change the election process. Yes, it's left up to the state legislature is how the elections are run, unless Congress acts, it says. So that's an interesting one where Congress can make election rules uniform without serious reform of the unbelievable amount of secret money in politics. It's going to be hard to get away from the situation that you just so well described.

80% of Americans, no matter your political persuasion, do not think billionaires should control politics in the United States. And probably the other 20% is like, I'm not sure. You know what I mean? And they're on both sides, to be fair. Yeah, totally. You know, people, a lot of us on the progressive side talk about the right-wing ones. Hey, there's left-wing ones too. There are. People that have so much money, maybe they're well-intentioned, but they should not have that kind of overwhelming influence. They used to say one man, one vote. It should be one person, one vote, not $1, one vote. And it ends up being $1 or a billion dollars a billion votes the way this thing is set up. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends.

And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It's my girl in the studio! It's my girl in the studio. Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday

with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. I know that when you were in the Senate, you worked on a bill, the McCain-Feingold Act with John McCain, obviously, when he was still alive, that worked to limit some of the ways And the Supreme Court in Citizens United felt like corporations are people and that money is speech. And so because corporations are people and money is speech, any attempts to limit the money that corporations spend is a limitation of their First Amendment rights. And I'm curious, as somebody who teaches law, is educated in the law, works with the Constitution extensively, what is your view on that issue,

on the issue of are corporations people, is money speech? I'd love to hear your take on that. I mean, you're dead right again. I mean, no, I don't think corporations are people in the sense that most of us would understand it. In fact, one of the questions I've never gotten a good answer to is, well, who do you think allows corporations to exist? Governments. If governments don't create a corporate mechanism, then it can't exist. So it's not like a human being. It's something that's a creature of the state. And the idea that somehow corporations are the same as people when it comes to political speech is a total end run and abuse of the First Amendment. That was an awful decision. It was not about McCain-Feingold. It was actually about a 1907

law signed by Teddy Roosevelt, sponsored by a Wisconsin senator fighting Bob La Follette, that said, look, the corporations already control our economy, you know, the robber barons, Standard Oil and all that. Now they're trying to buy our elections. We're not going to let corporations dominate elections. So that law is the one that they gutted in Citizens United. And nobody had even questioned it for 100 years. It was a five to four decision. It was a lousy decision, a lawless decision. But, you know, it set the stage for what's happened in the last 10 to 12 years, which is this huge amount of hidden money by both sides that is corrupting

the political process in exactly the way you said. So we have to put the genie back in the bottle. There are ways through public financing, There are ways through enforcement of laws. You know, the myth of this thing is that people think that there's no coordination between these corporations and the politicians. Of course there is. And it's supposed to be a federal crime, but there's no real enforcement. So that law needs to be strengthened because that's the whole basis of it. Well, it's okay if they do it, if they don't coordinate with politicians.

The coordination is grotesque and it has to be stopped. I'm a fan of the idea of public financing and that everybody who is qualified can get in this pool of money. And that is going to go a very long way to eliminate politicians being beholden to billionaires or corporations to enact some sort of or advocate for some sort of policy, if that is removed as a motivator from the political system. You are right. I mean, it's working in places like Seattle and New York City and Maine.

I mean, they have shown that you can do this and it really improves the political process and it brings in all kinds of people, teachers, firefighters, farmers. First of all, who has the money to leave their normal job? What are you going to do? Ruin your business? Ruin your family's livelihood? Shouldn't be like that. Yeah, exactly.

You're just going to quit your job and fund your campaign? How exactly? This idea that it takes over a year to get elected now to federal office, it means that the average person can't do it. You can't do it. Like financially. Yeah. Sets it up for rich people or people that are going to be backed by exceedingly rich people

who will control them. We here in the Midwest, you and I know, we don't believe there's no such thing as a free lunch. There's also no such thing as a free multimillion dollar campaign. True enough. True enough. Okay. Here's the, I think everybody listening to this is going to be like, yep, that is a problem. That's a big problem. I agree with it. I don't like it. What can we do, Russ? You talk about in your book ideas of exactly the types of things that we can and potentially should be doing to address these constitutional crises, plural, that are facing us that really must be addressed.

Otherwise, we are running very quickly towards even more and greater types of crises, the likes of which will be difficult to recover from. What can we do? People who are listening to this, I can promise you care and want to do something. So tell us what it is. Well, we think that the way to do it is to make it more of the we the people way to change the constitution. And so you would change the way you amend, if you're going to have a constitutional convention, let's say, that the only way that something would get ratified and become a part of the Constitution is if a majority of the states, 26 of the states, have a popular vote in the state, Minnesota, Wisconsin, the majority of people in those

states say, I want this. And then there would be a national referendum where a majority of the people would have to vote for it. So it wouldn't just be state by state, although the state by state would have a popular element to it, but there would be a national referendum. If all of those things happened, then you would have a constitutional amendment. I think we would get rid of the electoral college if we had that approach quite easily. It sounds boring because it's the procedure, but the procedure is everything. And if we can't introduce the will of the people, as opposed to, as you said, the will of some gerrymandered legislators, then we can't go down this road. So we have to change the system in order to get the changes

that are, you were right, they are needed. We need changes. Yeah. I have said something similar and a little bit of a different idea to what you're saying. You're proposing allowing states to ratify an amendment by having a statewide referendum on that thing. And there's no districts, so there's no gerrymandering. It's a statewide

popular vote. I've said something similar, which is I would only support a constitutional convention if the attendees could be elected via statewide popular vote. No districts. That is part of our proposal too, and that is a dead right. You can't just have these legislators doing it. There should be a slate of people where the public gets to weigh in. I think that's a very important idea. I've heard one person suggest that in addition to these statewide popular vote contests, there should also be some people chosen to attend who are selected at random, like jury duty, where somebody's like, listen, Chris, you're going. And Chris is like, me? Like, maybe Chris didn't throw his hat in the ring. But we're like, we got to have a broad cross section of ordinary

Americans, not power hungry people, not people looking for 15 minutes of fame, you're going to and I can see how there are downsides to that. What if you accidentally call up five Nazis from one state? Chances of that are small, but I can understand the potential, like, I don't know. But I can also understand how that might even make the system seem like more of a representation of the real America, if some people are chosen at random. There are people that are experimenting with this kind of an idea. You're ahead of the curve here. When I was teaching at Stanford, there's a guy there who wanted to experiment with this professor.

And he did it in Mongolia, where he got a whole bunch of people sort of randomly together and they were taken care of. They took him to a hotel and they got him food and everything. And they just had him propose stuff after a few days. And it went really well. So people are trying to experiment with citizen rallies, citizen gatherings, things like that. And I think that should be a part of this, where there are public gatherings, public discussions. And maybe they pass resolutions saying we want this or we want that.

Maybe they would be binding. Maybe they wouldn't. Maybe they're just advisory. But once a politician hears an advisory thing like that, they tend to pay attention. So I think that's right. Not only a popular element, but maybe just some random people too. I'm not sure I'm going to endorse it here on your show, but I kind of like the idea. It's worth exploring. I don't know if I'm like 100% behind it either, but I'm like, you know what? That's an idea I would explore. I can understand some of the rationale behind it.

And I think the idea too, that people who are elected by popular vote, but who are not currently politicians, people are not waiting. They're not going to vote a certain way so that their corporate special interests give them a stamp of approval. They're not voting a certain way so that they can get re-elected later they don't have that power motivation of i need to obtain and consolidate power for myself well

this is what happened recently in chile where they were trying to get rid of the old constitution under panosha it didn't work out in the end but when they asked the people of the country to vote for delegates, they only voted for people that weren't from either of the political parties. They voted for teachers, indigenous people, and other people. So the delegates were just like you described. They were not seen as politicians, but as people that were going to do this, this is what they would do, then go back to what they do. I think that would help its credibility too. Totally. People of the upper Midwest, like where we're from, they tend to not be ostentatious people. They tend to be people who want to work hard. They want opportunities for their family and they want opportunities for other people's families. It's not about the showing off of like,

you know, I have 18, $5 million cars parked in my driveway. You know, like it's really, you know, exactly the kind of people that I'm talking about here. So to have a broad cross section of people from all walks of life, maybe you're an iron worker, maybe you're a teacher, maybe you're a police officer. I feel like that would let people of the individual states and each state is a little different, right? Highly agricultural states. Maybe you'd have some agricultural states, maybe you'd

have some agricultural workers. Maybe you'd have somebody who works in mines. People would really feel like these are the people from my state. This is what the country itself wants, not just some people who raised $1 billion and ran a bunch of attack ads who got elected. Right. I agree. Okay. How do we change the rules though? Because that's the sticky wicket, right? Well, we have to change the rules the way I said in terms of how it's voted on, but also you might want to have a lower percentage requirement in the House and the Senate to have the Congress propose an amendment instead of two thirds of both houses,

maybe 60%. And then if you wanted to, you could leave in place the three-quarters of the state still have to ratify it, but hopefully by popular vote. Those are the main things. The other thing is we've got to make it so that there can be some agreement about what's going to be brought up. In other words, you don't have to have – maybe they do want a whole new constitution. People vote for it, that's fine. But there has to be some mechanism so that people can say, all right, we're going to take up these 10 things and that's it.

So that people can have the confidence of knowing that it's not going to be what's called a runaway convention, where all of a sudden it starts doing all kinds of things that you don't want to do. So again, I think there should be the ability to have a whole new constitution, but you also should have the ability to say, we agree, we're only going to talk about these 10 things. That would make it easier for people to agree to a convention because they wouldn't be scared of what else might come up. So that might be a rule to allow as well. And in your mind, is the best way to get those kind of rule changes? As somebody who has served in Congress, how would an ordinary

citizen like me, not an elected official, how would I go about lobbying Congress to change these rules? What can the ordinary citizens do? Well, I'll tell you, I was in 28 years as an elected representative. I paid attention when people came up to me and said, you need to do this. You need to do that. So what I think you should say to somebody running for Congress or the state legislature is you got to do something to make it easier to change the Constitution in a good way, but not in a crazy way. You got to change those rules. And the thing is, they can say yes to that without saying, what's their position on abortion?

What's their position on guns? It's just like, could you just go and change the way this is done? And for a lot of them, it's going to be a free one because they'll say, well, you know, maybe you're right. That's the thing right there, Sharon. They got to hear it from people. If they don't hear it from people, they're going to assume that people don't care and aren't interested. And the truth is, I mean, who the heck was even talking about this a few years ago? I certainly wasn't. I'm not like an expert on it. I didn't know anything about it eight, nine years ago. I certainly wasn't. I'm not like an expert on it. I didn't know anything about it eight, nine years ago. And so we all have to be part of the process of learning what it takes to fix our constitution without ruining it. And for the average citizen to go up to elected officials or candidates and say, you need to do something about this, that can have an impact.

I also think people reading your book, it'll help them really understand the issues in much more in depth than we have time to go into today. You'll have a much fuller picture of like, here is what we're facing. And it will also give you ideas of like, here is what we need to do to address these issues. These are not issues without solutions. There are solutions to these problems. It's not just like, ooh, tough one, can't think of any ideas. No, no. We know what we need to do to fix it. Not saying that that actually is an easy thing to achieve, but the solutions exist. And so reading your book will also help people internalize what those solutions are. Well, this is exactly why we wrote the book. And this is really the proof of it being on your podcast, because Peter and I said, well,

you know, people don't know what this is. And it's kind of technical. We need to put it in a way that the general public will get interested. This was our goal, that there be a conversation about it. You already have ideas about how this might work. A lot of people would have ideas about it. The country, it's we the people. The people should be deciding this. And so the only way is that they know what's going on. So you're doing us a real favor by making sure your folks that listen to your podcast learn a little bit about this and maybe they'll get some interesting action on it. These are conversations we should be having. I think that's one of the ideas that talking to you has underscored for me.

It's not that I have all the right ideas. It's not that you have all the right ideas. It's that we, the people, get to decide what the right ideas are and that we cannot make those decisions if we're not even willing to entertain the conversation. Amen to that one. If there is one thing that you would recommend that the average citizen can do to help protect and strengthen democracy in the United States, Because a lot of people, myself included, have concerns, have concerns about the direction things are headed, but it is not too late.

It's not too far gone. There are things we can do. If you had a piece of advice from somebody who has studied the law and also has worked, had a long career as an elected official, what piece of advice would you give to somebody listening today? I would tell everybody when they see a candidate, whether it's at a church dinner, whether it's at a political speech or whatever, to go up to that politician, be polite, maybe grab their ear, don't hurt them too much, but just grab their ear and say, listen, Maybe grab their ear. Now, don't hurt them too much, but just grab their ear and say, listen, I'm going to vote for you this time. But in two years, if you can't come back and tell me who from the other party you work with and what you got done, I'm not going to vote for you again.

In other words, citizen actions demanding cooperation and bipartisanship. Right now, there's people out there saying, don't you dare work with those Democrats. Don't you dare work with those Republicans. We need to get back to the kind of response people in Wisconsin had when they heard I was working with John McCain. I said, you don't even know what the bill is and you're cheering. That's because they knew it was a Republican and a Democrat. And we got to get back to that. And the only way to get back to that is people demanded that politicians work together. That's right. Because we need more than one political party. More than one political party is healthy for democracy. One political party is not a democracy, right? Even if your preferred party, you're strongly on the left or the right. One party is bad for America. We need more than one healthy, functional

political party. And in order to get anything done, the system is designed so that they have to work together. Absolutely. I love that. Thank you so much for being here today. I love this conversation. I loved reading your book. Thank you for your work. And hopefully this will not be the last time we meet. Anytime, Sharon. We're thrilled to be on here and let us know. You can find Russ Feingold's book, The Constitution in Jeopardy, wherever you buy your books. Thanks for being here today.

This show is researched and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. Our executive producer is Heather Jackson. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder. And if you enjoyed this episode, would you consider leaving us a rating or review on your favorite podcast platform? That helps us so much. And we always love to see your shares and tags on social media. We'll see you again soon.