Keeping the flag safe

Press, 21 August 1989, Page 12

Keeping the flag safe

From a correspondent in Washington, D.C., for the “Economist”

AMENDING the Constitution is not something that one is supposed to do lightly. Yet President George Bush seems to relish the task.

He has already called for more constitutional amendments than has any other modern President. He wants the Constitution to ban abortion, balance the budget, give him a line-item veto over spending, allow school prayer and preserve the flag from burning.

He called for the last after the Supreme Court said that flagburning was free speech. He expected a quick wave of populist rage to carry his point.

Things have not worked out that way. The House of Representatives, reflecting a deepseated reluctance among voters to tinker with the Constitution, is resisting. Insted of an amendment, the House Judiciary Committee voted on July 27 for a bill that would outlaw flag-burning. The whole House is likely to follow suit in September. The Speaker, Mr Tom Foley, is all for a statute. He says that to amend the Constitution lightly is a dangerous precedent, and that Mr Bush is threatening to turn it into a document like the California constitution, festooned with elaborate privileges.

Mr Bush’s people argue that a statute against flag-burning would fail a constitutional test, since it would almost certainly contradict the spirit of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech”). Mr Foley says that a statute could be reviewed quickly by the Supreme Court, whereas an amendment could take years before that stage.

Congressmen are finding that many voters are writing to ask if an amendment is really necessary. And a congressional army marches on its mailbag.

Copyright — The Economist