DeSantis' call for a constitutional convention won't go anywhere | Opinion

Lest anyone think his power in Florida was diminished by the wreckage of his presidential campaign, Gov. Ron DeSantis made a big splash as he reasserted himself in the 2024 legislative session.

Just home from Iowa and New Hampshire, the governor endorsed a four-point plan that looks like a platform for a 2028 national campaign and laid it before Florida lawmakers. His ideas were dutifully praised by House and Senate leaders in Tallahassee, of course but probably won’t change anything in Washington.

DeSantis endorsed what’s known as an “Article V convention” to amend the U.S. Constitution in ways the right wing of the Republican Party has been yearning for since Barry Goldwater was saying nice things about extremism. America hasn’t had such a convention since the original confab in Philadelphia but the Constitution provides that we’ll have to get out the powdered wigs and quill pens again if 34 states say so.

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There are resolutions in this session to make Florida the 27th state to call for a new constitutional initiative. Whatever comes out of such a convention would then have to be ratified by 38 states.

The amendments DeSantis desires would:

— Require Congress to balance the federal budget except in times of emergency.

— Impose term limits on Congress.

— Give the president a line-item veto of expenditures in federal budgets.

— Forbid Congress to exempt itself from laws it passes.

If they publish an updated edition of “Profiles In Courage” someday, none of these proposals will earn DeSantis a special new chapter. But each of them is very popular with voters willing to overlook some procedural and political flaws. State lawmakers have passed resolutions backing the balanced-budget and term-limits ideas.

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Making Congress obey the same laws it imposes on the rest of us is a fine idea. The political problem is, Congress has had more than two centuries to do so, and it obviously has no intention of acting.

The same selfish reasoning explains why there’s no line-item veto, which DeSantis and many other governors wield in state budgets. Congress likes cramming hometown pork projects into the federal budget, or writing proviso language that favors different campaign donors. Members don’t want presidents redlining what they spend.

Everybody is for a balanced budget — so long as all the military bases, pollution clean-up projects, highways, bridges, social programs and schools in their own states are protected. And when they want to spend more that the government takes in, members could just find a national emergency, like getting Taylor Swift to the Super Bowl on time, and throw money at it.

They’ve done sillier stuff.

Term limits feel good and Americans always love to show those pandering professional politicians who’s boss. But all they really do is toss out the good with the bad, and replace them with pandering professional politicians who might or might not do better. It would be better if we all paid attention to who’s doing well and who needs to go, and then vote accordingly but it’s easier to just make them all run for something else — or become lobbyists — after eight or 12 years.

DeSantis is right that Congress will never curtail its own powers, so a convention will be the only option. But that’s problematic in itself.

States can list an agenda but what’s stopping a “runaway” convention from proposing a whole new, radically different country?

How are these delegates to be selected? How do we know lobbyists for special interests — oil, big tech, pharma, agriculture, media, defense contractors — won’t influence them in writing a new Constitution? After seeing what the U.S. House just did in choosing a speaker, does anyone think a constitutional convention could agree on a document 38 states will ratify?

If a proposed charter fails ratification, can the convention reconvene and keep putting out new ones? Or would the states have to authorize a do-over? And then another and another?

It was probably easier 230 years ago, when there were only 13 colonies and everyone pretty much agreed to form a country. But even then, they got slavery wrong and compromised on a bunch of language we’re still fighting about.

Bill Cotterell is a retired capitol reporter for United Press International and the Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached at bcotterell@govexec.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: DeSantis call for constitutional convention unlikely to succeed