Progressive Politics

It was just decorum putting assets in trusts for prez, modern era laws did restrict other officials to some degree.

In 2016 the Republicans just refused to honor those laws and nobody held them to account, now they are not really bothering to pretend. Open corruption.

The Constitution does forbid emoluments, but that is ignored by our captured (in)justice department.

I'm not even fully sure it was good at the time? Like I agree, it was a document of the time, but even of the time it isn't a very good document.

• It was written, by and for the benefit of rich male plantation owners. The voting requirements (although they have changed) was effectively for the Landed Gentry rather than "the People". The whole document was for people who in 1776 were worried they might lose their slaves and wanted to take native land in the West as well as not pay taxes without a commons seat (which, in 1776, was people the landed gentry or their sons). As a result, things get a little bit tricky.
• The Office of the President was made with George Washington in mind and only him in mind. Like that's what the people at the time did. The problem with writing the executive branch with that in mind is that for one, George Washington is/was mortal and two someone other than George Washington would come along and do things that the founders didn't like. And I'm going to be real with you right now. George Washington had and still has a Personality Cult and as a result a lot of power was heaped on him. Both elections he ran in he won unopposed. The first war the US did in the post constitution period was the Whiskey Rebellion, where Pensylvannia Farmers, a lot of them unrepresented in government, rebelled against the Federal Government over Taxes on Whiskey. Yes. I am not making that. Personality cults are something you should always avoid, but there are two (maybe three if you include Mount Rushmore) congress funded pieces of Art that depict George Washington as a God. One of which is in the Occulus of the Congress Rotunda. Americans treat Washington and it's founding fathers with a type of worshipfulness that I only see in some of the worst dictatorships. In the UK, we don't even treat our Monarchs like that.
• Even Thomas "I had a 14 year old sex slave" Jefferson said that the constitution and laws in general should have a lifespan of at least 19 years. If that was suggested today, in America, he would be shot, but he's kinda right. There are things that the US does that are completely undemocratic and even totalitarian that are done because they use the constitution as an excuse.
• It is not merely static, it has become a holy text. No really, there's paintings of Jesus holding the constitution. Because it's seen as a holy text, people are unwilling to be critical of it or they use it to justify shit. Take the second amendment for example. When it was written in 1792 (yes you heard) it was made because the US needed a way to respond to rebellions and military crisises and France couldn't help because of the French Revolution. The gun laws at the time reflected this: to own a gun, you needed to register it with the authorities, keep your gun in a locked box in your home, have the ammo stored separately (in the muster house) and attend training every Monday night in one state. How it's being used to justify owning a military level AR15, excuse mass shootings, and give hard ons to people who insist they could definitely take out a Predator Drone with a Semi Auto from half a mile away.