In 'The Roosevelt Myth,' his masterful deconstruction of America's most overrated President, John T. Flynn writes, 'There is a kind of little man who will tell you that he can't hit a nail straight with a hammer, but who loves to spread a big country like the United States out before him on top of a table, pull up a chair and sit down to rearrange the whole thing to suit his heart's desire. Through the providence of God this kind of fellow, in a country of practical politicians, does not ordinarily get into a spot where he can play this game.'

Leland D. Baldwin has done literally this in 'Reframing the Constitution,' a shining example of 1970s establishment liberalism. He is convinced that the problem with America's original Constitution is a lack of centralized efficiency. With an airy wave of his hand, he erases the 50 states from the political map and replaces them with sixteen new states -- provinces, really -- administering such programs as the central government sees fit to devolve upon them. Under Baldwin's reframed Constitution, all power flows from the top down.

But that's just the start. Baldwin also rearranges the Congress, creates a new Executive with the president chosen by Congress and the Chief Justice as head of state, and issues a new Bill of Rights that (needless to say) breathes not a word about antiquated ideas like the right to keep and bear arms.

I have to grant that there are a number of interesting ideas in this book -- ones I've found worth thinking about in my own moments of imaginary nation-building. But Baldwin has too many false premises, and they lead inevitable to bad analysis and worse conclusions. For example, he makes a false distinction between 'human rights' and 'property rights.' Elsewhere, he complains that the division of sovereignty between the states and the central government, and the system of checks and balances we all learned about in elementary school, 'ensure that the government will be dilatory, cumbersome, and ineffective.'

Didn't he ever read The Federalist?

While it has a few good ideas, this thin book is too weighted down by its own incorrect assumptions to be anything more than a monument of 1970s State-worship.