Lawrence Summers on constitutional reform

Former Secretary of Treasury (and Harvard President)Lawrence Summers has just published an op-ed in the Washington Pos, "Ending Presidents' Second Term Curse," arguing that we need to move to a single-term presidency, perhaps, he writes, of six years.  The evidence, he suggests, is that second-term presidents rarely accomplish anything significant.  A similar (unacknowledged) argument was made during the Bicentennial more than a quarter century ago by elite Washington lawyer Lloyd Cutler and political scientist James Sundquist, who advocated a single six-year term. 

 Summers concludes his column by writing, somewhat laconically, that “that National reflection on reform is overdue.” Well, yes!  But one wonders what model of constitutional change Summers has in mind.  Who, for example, will be doing the reflecting, with what result?  Is he calling, for example, for a nationwide mass movement to “reflect” on the multiple explanations for the fact, as he puts it in his opening sentence, that “Disillusionment with Washington has rarely run higher.”  Or is his column, as one might expect given his background and its venue, directed at fellow insiders who will….  Do what? Call for a constitutional amendment in the absence of a national outcry that such a fundamental change (which would, among other things, make us like Mexico, which relies on a president who serves a single six-year term)?  Why would anyone believe that two-thirds of each house of Congress would support, without significant pressure from their constituents, such a change?  Or, perhaps, Summers will lend his illustrious presence to the call for a new Article V constitutional convention that will have a mandate to engage in a truly comprehensive set of “national reflections” on the various reforms that are indeed overdue in our sclerotic 18^th century constitutional order?

I do not mean to be as snarky as I may sound.  I am grateful to practically anyone who is willing to go beyond attacking one or another contemporary “leader” and instead suggests that we need to look at the extent to which our basic institutional structures may be at least partially to blame for our predicament.  And Summers is obviously no ordinary person.  His endorsement of an Article V constitutional convention could be a breakthrough moment, requiring other establishmentarians, automatically identified as “serious” and “thoughtful,”  to take seriously ideas that they simply dismissed when made by ordinary “folks” who lack such credentials.  

I’m not sure where I stand on the single-six-year term, though I do know that my support would be conditional on including the power of Congress, by a two-thirds vote meeting in joint session (to limit the power of the Senate) to vote “no confidence” in an incumbent president anytime after, say, the first two years of the six-year term. In any event, it’s good to have Secretary Summers’ contribution to the discussion of our constitutional system.  But will in fact anyone (beyond predictable academics) take it seriously enough even to discuss it? Is this just another example of "sound and fury" (of the kind that I often engage in) that in fact "signif[ies] nothing" about the actual potential for changing our remarkably dysfunctional system?