SKB, all Americans venerate the Constitution. Its ambiguities and encroachments are voiced here from both sides all the time. Could your wish for "Congress to function as it should again" be problematic? Could the Founders have established a fundamentally flawed system of government?

The Atlantic's October edition features an article titled Our Fragile Constitution on the book The Royalist Revolution by Harvard political theorist Eric Nelson which asks if gridlock is not a result of abandoning the Constitution but the product of flaws inherent in its design.

The book raises the disturbing possibility that it is, and that America's best hope may be to have less faith in it. Nelson says neither Congress nor president has the capacity to govern alone, but either can refuse to compromise, and prevent the other from governing. The Constitution's capacity to withstand the poor behaviour of politicians seems to me a bigger problem than choice of any nominee.