UPDATED: An ‘Ebullient’ President-Elect Who Cares About The Constitution As A Timeless Document

Did Barack Obama ever make such an inquiry? No. Barack Obama was not in the habit of hiding how he felt about the US Constitution. As much as he disliked the philosophical foundations of the republic, the president seemed to know a bit about the intent. Here’s Senator Barack Obama talking about the document Republicans seldom mention and Democrats deem dated:

… as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution … generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court-focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that. I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn’t structured that way.

The president recognized and rejected “the Constitution as a charter of negative liberties.” Because of the obstacles the Constitution poses to “redistributive justice,” community organizing à la Obama aims at achieving extra-constitutional change.