Hello and welcome to Whistlestop a podcast of the presidency. I'm John Dickerson of

CBS News.

You may wonder why we spent four episodes on the founding meeting in Philadelphia in 1787.

Well, just a couple of weeks ago, Senator Rand Paul quoted Monteskew on the balance of powers during

a debate over the President's assertion of emergency power.

This week, Democratic presidential candidates floated the idea of expanding the number of

seats on the Supreme Court and doing away with the Electoral College.

These contemporary affairs directly relate to those. doing away with the electoral college.

These contemporary affairs directly relate to those issues bandied about in that hot

summer in Philadelphia.

No stodramis, got nothing on us.

But the amazing predictive powers of the Whistlestop

Ouija board tell only part of the story. Anytime you're talking about or

thinking about the presidency you should return to the starting place. If you have the starting place in mind,

you'll understand whether the current system

is running smoothly along in those 230-year-old grooves

or in the alternative throwing sparks as the system flirts with bouncing off and into the

ravine.

As seeking citizens with a few practical judgments and open minds, we should look not just at the structure of the system created in Philadelphia,

but at the ideas behind that structure and the process that created it. The balance of power

system might need tweaking as it exists today, but we'll only know where

and how to trim if we acquaint ourselves with the root motivations and objectives of the

...