The author is arguing precisely that the constitution should not be put on a pedestal, and that recent political deadlocks might be due to the constitution not being perfect, and not human error.
I'd argue this has eroded in recent decades due to lack of transparency, which has greatly hindered the third branch, the Judiciary, from being able to act as effectively as it might have otherwise.
I don't think that the American judiciary's problem is that it's hindered in its actions.
Historically, we should have seen more impeachments of federal officials; Congress needs to wield its authority in an exercise of checks and balances on the executive and judicial branches.
The Ethics Committees largely hand-slap only the most gross violations of their members. I see your intent there, but I'd much rather see Congress holding a higher standard of itself.
If you're referring to the overreach of Federal officials, then that gets a bit more sticky. Yes, it should be reined in, but when I see one Congressmen one-upping another on how we need to be "tough" or have "no tolerance" for this or that, I'm little surprised that our police and intelligence agencies act the way they do.
Puritanism dies hard. I'd say the constitution is working perfectly: the government we have is the one we deserve and one that really does reflect what this country, on the whole, wants. People in this country are still overall prudes who want harsh punishments, and that's what we've got. We don't need to fix the constitution, because that won't fix the root cause which is that our society needs fixing.
Can you justify this in a non-self-referential way, ie: via data other than election outcomes?
I have a much greater likelihood of engaging my state and local politicians than I do my federal representatives, and while New Hampshire residents have more direct representation than, say, California residents, it's still dramatically improved over our representation by federal reps.
This of course comes with its own set of pitfalls, for which the federal government has been placed as arbiter, and ceding / being granted power with which to remedy, but in my opinion, term limits seem to be more of a band-aid for a hemorrhaging wound than a a root cause fix.
That is not the system we have: we have a fully-polarized system in which each major party's agenda consists primarily of ensuring that the maximum number of items from the other party's agenda to be enacted will be zero (I say "maximum", because rolling back or repealing any previously-enacted items is also an option). Since they're both quite good at the tactics, the result is inaction even in times when action is needed, to the detriment of the American people.
This is not correct. Sometimes inaction is much better than action. In the case of a corrupt government, inaction is always preferable.
The US constitution is built to create deadlock. See checks/balances. It is this deadlock that has lead to American prosperity. While it is unable to do good, it is also unable to do harm.
The question this essay asks is, how effective is it at those goals? Are there situations where it could all collapse? If yes, are there other systems which are less likely to collapse?
A perfect case in point, the patriot act and the department of homeland security. That represented action taken. Solutions developed. Where they the right actions and the right solutions? Not in the least. Would we be better off without them? Probably.
People who complain about "deadlock" are really complaining Congress isn't implementing their legal and budgetary priorities. But that isn't because there's something wrong; that's because not enough of their countrymen agree.
"When politicians today praise America’s system of checks and balances, they seem to understand it as a self-correcting mechanism: When one branch pushes too hard, the other branches must push back, preserving equilibrium. That understanding actually encourages politicians to overreact, in the belief that they are playing a vital constitutional role. It also encourages complacency, because a system that rights itself requires no painful compromises to preserve."
The problem the author points out with the American constitution is not that we have deadlock, and then we must compromise to get around that deadlock. The problem the author points out is that we can get deadlock, and the system itself has no recovery mechanism for bad actors; deadlock makes it possible for the entire system to collapse. Parliamentary systems have new elections when the existing government cannot reach a deal. That is, the system itself has a failsafe for true deadlock.