Me the People

TheUnited States Constitution promised a More Perfect Union. It's a shame no onebothered to write a more perfect Constitution-one that didn't trigger more thantwo centuries of arguments about what the darn thing actually says.

Until now.

Perfection is at hand. A new, improved Constitution is here. And you areholding it.

But first, some historical context: In the eighteenth century, a lawyer namedJames Madison gathered his friends in Philadelphia and, over four long months, wrotefour short pages: the Constitution of the United States of America. Not bad.

In the nineteenth century, a president named Abraham Lincoln freed an entirepeople from the flaws in that Constitution by signing the EmancipationProclamation. Pretty impressive.

And in the twentieth century, a doctor at the Bethesda Naval Hospital delivereda baby-but not just any baby. Because in the twenty-first century, that babywould become a man, that man would become a patriot, and that patriot wouldrescue a country . . . by single-handedly rewriting that Constitution.

Why? We think of our Constitution as the painstakingly designed blueprint drawnup by, in Thomas Jefferson's words, an "assembly of demigods" who laid thefoundation for the sturdiest republic ever created. The truth is, it was noblueprint at all but an Etch A Sketch, a haphazard series of blunders, shakenclean and redrawn countless times during a summer of petty debates, drunkenramblings, and desperate compromise-as much the product of an "assembly ofdemigods" as a confederacy of dunces.

No wonder George Washington wished it "had been made more perfect." No wonderBenjamin Franklin stomached it only "with all its faults." The Constitutionthey wrote is a hot mess. For starters, it doesn't mention slavery, ordemocracy, or even Facebook; it plays favorites among the states; it has typos,smudges, and misspellings; and its Preamble, its most famous passage, waswritten by a man with a peg leg. Which, if you think about it, gives ourConstitution hardly a leg to stand on.

[Pause for laughter.]

Now stop laughing. Because you hold in your hands no mere book, but the mostimportant document of our time. Its creator, Daily Show writer KevinBleyer, paid every price, bore every burden, and saved every receipt in hisquest to assure the salvation of our nation's founding charter. He flew toGreece, the birthplace of democracy. He bused to Philly, the home ofindependence. He went toe-to-toe (face-to-face) with Scalia. He added nightlyconfabs with James Madison to his daily consultations with Jon Stewart. Hetracked down not one but two John Hancocks-to make his version twice asofficial. He even read the Constitution of the United States.

So prepare yourselves, fellow patriots, for the most significant literary eventof the twenty-first, twentieth, nineteenth, and latter part of the eighteenthcenturies. Me the People won't just form a More Perfect Union. It will saveAmerica.

EmmyAward winner Kevin Bleyer is an Emmy Award-winning writer for TheDaily Show with Jon Stewart, for which he has won multiple Emmy Awards.Before rewriting the Constitution, Bleyer co-authored the #1 New York Timesbestseller Earth: The Book, and negotiated bipartisan consensus as awriter and producer for Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher and DennisMiller. And he is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, so hesecretly runs the government already. He lives in New York, where he regularlyposes for portraits.

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