A New Constitution for a New America

This is not a radical book. Dr. MacDonald is opposed to the initiative and referendum in federal affairs. He does not advocate proportional representation. Though proposing the direct popular recall for congressmen and senators, he would extend the terms of the former to four years. Though he would reduce the terms of the latter also to four years, he would not alter the equal representation of the states in the Senate, despite their great and growing inequalities in population, wealth, and political importance. He is opposed to all primary legislation and other laws for the regulation of the affairs of political parties. Nor is anything said about the further development of the federal corrupt practices acts in order to diminish the power of wealth in politics and to foster the supremacy of an enlightened public opinion. In short, the progressive movements of the decade before the war in the field of state government have left him cold and indifferent.
The author approves certain increases in the powers of the Congress. He would give it jurisdiction over divorce, the creation and regulation of business corporations, and any occupation or industry which is in fact national or interstate in scope. But he is vehemently opposed to national prohibition. The states, he thinks, should be prohibited from making any law respecting the establishment of religion, or abridging the freedom of speech and of the press. The state militia should be abolished. Universal suffrage should be established throughout the Union for federal elections, and the Congress should have exclusive control thereof. Congressmen should be elected in each state at large on a general ticket, half of them in such a manner as to represent the dominant economic group within the state. He approves an executive budget system, but his panacea is responsible cabinet government upon the model of the British parliamentary system.... --The American Political Science Review