This week, I'm listening to America with Clay Jenkinson, is a constitutional convention even possible?

My conversation with historian Bo Breslin about the nuts and bolts of a constitutional convention in our time in America.

Neither one of us thinks such a convention very likely, given the constitutional conservatism of the American people.

But if we chose to hold a convention around the 250th birthday

of the U.S., how would it be organized? Where would it take place? How would we choose delegates to make

sure this time that they truly represented our multicultural demographics? How would we avoid

letting the lobbyists, professional politicians, and the media distort the process and ruin the project?

Would it be possible in our time to enforce a secrecy rule among the delegates?

What sorts of civics training would we want them to undergo and by whom?

If we created a new constitutional draft, what would the ratification process look like?

Thomas Jefferson urged us to tear up the Constitution once every 19 years.

Why have we been so reluctant to revise or replace our broken and paralytic constitution?

All of that and more on this week's Listening to America.

Hello everyone and welcome to the special edition of Listening to America. I'm Clay Jenkinson and across from me virtually is my friend Bo Breslin of Skidmore College

up in the Northeast, New York.

So good to see you, my friend.

Oh, it's fantastic to see you, Clay.

It's been a while. Happy New Year.

A lot's going on.

We're recording this in the early middle February just before Valentine's Day.

And I have so many questions for you, but I thought we today would talk about what a constitutional

convention might look like.

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