FDR's unfinished revolution

And the most radical thing we could expect is -- there has been talk in Federalist Society circles of the "Constitution-in-Exile," which is the pre-Roosevelt Constitution. The Constitution-in-Exile is thought by many Bush supporters to be the real Constitution. That's why it's the Constitution-in-Exile, and why it has to be restored to the throne.

The Ahmed Chalabi Constitution?

Right. If you look at the pre-Roosevelt Constitution, which had very limited powers for Congress, no protection against sex discrimination, no right of privacy, no civil rights statutes -- and, probably, those would be viewed as beyond Congress' power in 1928 or so -- movements in that direction are certainly sought by many prominent people in the Bush administration. And while I doubt that Bush himself has heard of the Constitution-in-Exile, I don't doubt that he would have at least some sympathy for it.

And what if John Kerry wins? Is there a sea change in the other direction?

The sea changes would come from Bush, because we know Bush has some extremism in him. Kerry, I would expect, would be a moderate in the mold of Clinton. We would probably expect appointments like Breyer and Ginsburg, who are by no means liberals; they're just liberal as compared to Scalia and Rehnquist.

I would expect that Kerry would probably prefer people like that. And even if he didn't, because he'd have to work with Republicans -- whether or not there's a Republican majority in the Senate, there would be a very influential and somewhat angry Republican Party to contend with -- he'd probably be forced to appoint moderates. So that's what we'd have, and we'd have probably a more modest shift under Kerry toward the center.

And that leads to a larger point about Roosevelt's speech and your book. In arguing for government-guaranteed rights to a job, to education, to healthcare -- even to recreation -- both the speech and the book espouse a brand of liberalism that isn't particularly fashionable today. Even if Kerry wins in November, and even if he gets to appoint a few Supreme Court justices, it still seems unlikely that we'll see a major push toward these rights.

That's right. The candidate who was speaking most in Roosevelt's terms in the election was John Edwards. He often sounded like Roosevelt when he talked about there being "two Americas" and 43 million people who lack healthcare. Roosevelt said, you know, "I see one-third of the nation ill-clothed, ill-nourished and ill-housed," and this is unacceptable.

But Edwards didn't win the Democratic nomination. As compelling as his stump speeches were, there just doesn't seem to be much of a market for this kind of cooking.

It needn't be a form of left-wing liberalism. Roosevelt himself was famously against the more radical elements of his party, and the idea that we want to provide a decent opportunity for every citizen of America, and minimal security for people for whom opportunities aren't enough -- that oughtn't be a form of radical thinking. Even very conservative people claim to be committed to equal opportunity, and equal opportunity is a much more demanding idea than what Roosevelt wanted, which was just minimal opportunity.

In the end, what Roosevelt wanted was for these rights to become what you call "constitutive commitments" -- rights that are widely accepted in American society and cannot be eliminated without a "fundamental change in social understanding." If that was the goal for the Second Bill of Rights, how well are we doing?

Well, I guess I'd say that we're much more committed to it in principle than we are in practice, and we're less committed to it in principle than we ought to be. The leader of the "Greatest Generation" had an idea which the country hasn't lived up to.

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