I defy anyone to craft any political system or subset thereof that correctly anticipates societal shifts over the course of two and a half centuries.
As for the longevity of the U.S., there’s a strong argument that it has in fact not lasted 250 or so years, and that the reconstruction era amendments created a qualitatively different, more centralized country. But even if we ignore that, the U.S. has a lot going for it that has nothing to do with politics. Two oceans, peaceful neighbors, and more natural resources than we knew what to do with that we bought for practically nothing.
The US emerged from WW2 as basically the only advanced economy that wasn’t flattened, did essentially zero introspection and assumed our politics were superior. And yet we have open bribery of politicians, and the highest court opened the floodgates for the wealthiest to donate to politicians. The only thing left is to allow politicians to keep donations for personal use.
Europe has surpassed us in life expectancy, and soon China will surpass us in GDP. And no matter how much free speech we have, we can’t have a conversation about it because the media is weaponized to distract us.
From George Washington's presidential farewell address: "However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."
Just as another example, the Framers forgot to even mention that courts could strike down unconstitutional laws, causing a political crisis that came up only 15 years later. Oops!
AFAIK it only mandates it for the President. We're free to elect representatives and Senators how we please.
Some states cast them all for the popular winner in that state. Some split them proportionately among the top scoring candidates. Some states have agreed to a pact that, if enacted by enough states, will switch those states to casting their votes for the national popular vote winner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta....
In theory a state could hold ranked choice votes among any number of candidates and cast their electoral votes for the final ranked choice winner.
Even the primary system is something managed at the state level.
So a lot could be done but it requires changing state laws or potentially state constitutions.
President, as envisioned by founders, should barely even matter outside of war.
Whether we have adequately updated the constitution along the way to cover the new realities is a valid question, but governing by just what the original founders wrote doesn't have a great track record either.
How would you square the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause with enumerated powers?
CRA also expressly allows racism unlike the 14th. For instance the civil rights act allows a business to preferentially treat an Indian in a near reservation (but off res) business while outlawing discriminating say in favor of blacks near a historically black neighborhood.
Is the Constitution perfect? No.
But it's still fair to call them geniuses for what they accomplished.
Also, you are arguing the Founders interpretation of the Constitution is the same as the current Supreme Court. I'm not sure they would agree, but there's no way we can ever know.
This is untrue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_San_Marino
the Isle of Man goes back to 1000 or so
the current UK system is essentially identical to that of 1689 and has legal governmental continuity since 1066
- Led to a bloody civil war that was the most deadly war in human history (until WWI), over 600,000 Americans dead, just ~75 years later;
- Largely wiped out the indigenous people of North America;
- Enshrined chattel slavery;
- Denied the right to vote to women (and in fact all non-white people); and
- Has been involved in, responsible for and/or complicit with many coups in the rest of the world [1].
Maybe it's not the best thing to celebrate.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
It was up to the states to decide who could vote. So depending on the state you had woman voters [1].
[1]: https://www.nps.gov/articles/voting-rights-in-nj-before-the-...
They wrote the Articles of Confederation which failed leading to the Framers writing the Constitution.
[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/countries-are-the-wor...
However, before that you could vote if you had enough captial. Is that democracy? That list says it isn't whilst saying that America, in which minorities and women could not vote, is a democracy. That seems like a line draw specifically to be able to say America is the oldest democracy, very disingenuous.
If you consider minorities and women to be people then America didn't become a true democracy until 1965.
