HERESY IN SANTA BARBARA

The U.S. Constitution "has ceased to be an instrument and has become an impediment," says Rexford Guy Tugwell, a survivor of the New Deal's brain trust.

He says it reasonably, mildly, and from the sunny tranquillity of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, Calif. There, he and 23 other tweedy, intellectual fellows have devoted the better part of a decade to rewriting the Constitution. Now in its 35th draft, their version of the document would, in Tug-well's words, "let law catch up with life." Most Americans assume that the world's oldest living written Constitution got that way because of its enduring adaptability to change. Not only does the Supreme Court constantly reinterpret it; Congress has also approved 25 amendments. Santa Barbara's fellows argue that none of this will do. The amending process is so slow (deliberately so), they note, that only ten amendments have occurred in this century, most of them minimal patchwork jobs. Recalls Fellow of the Center W. H. Ferry: "As we investigated the new institutions of American life and saw the President being forced again and again to operate on his emergency powers, we kept being driven back to a consideration of the document itself."

The fellows fault the Constitution on one familiar ground: that it was designed for an agrarian society with an elite electorate and disenfranchised majority. Now the U.S. is a highly industrial, urbanized and interdependent nation in which the electorate, though fully enfranchised, is paradoxically less able to influence Government bureaucracies. Moreover, say the fellows, the Constitution's original architects were devout Newtonians, who applied to human government the same kind of clocklike checks and balances that were then thought to govern the plan ets. Now scientists see the universe as a system of or ganic and symbiotic processes, and American Government may well be as outdated as Newtonian mechanics.

Plug in people. The center's version of the Constitution recognizes this collision between 18th century ideals and 20th century realities. Its language is businesslike. The fel lows see it as a tool that, like a computer, is complex, quick, and has change literally built into the program.

First and most pressing objective of the new Constitution is to plug the mass of people into democracy.

Thus, Article 2 requires delegates to political conventions to be elected, not appointed as they are today. Voters are also to be educated on all campaign issues through regular party conventions. Backroom political favors and private contributions to politicians are specifically abolished. The whole apparatus of elections is regulated by a nonpartisan "overseer of politics," who also finances all campaigns with public money.

In the center's view, the presidency has become too large a job for any single man, no matter how gifted and industrious he may be. The "Refounding Fathers," as the fellows cheerfully call themselves, propose that the President serve a six-year term, not succeed himself, and govern four areas: finance, foreign, military and legal affairs. Authority for the other Cabinet departments lies in a new executive branch (with two Vice Presidents) concerned only with domestic affairs. Says Fellow Harvey Wheeler, a political scientist: "This means the President loses much of his power as a legislator. But he gains stature as a statesman and leader." No more senators. "There has to be trouble with a Constitution," Wheeler adds, "that has brought us to the point where nine men who don't even represent the people are making all kinds of policy for the nation." Under the rewritten Constitution, the Supreme Court's powers are spread between three separate high courts. One handles cases brought up from lower courts; another decides on constitutional matters; and the third watches over judicial procedures at all levels. All three are forbidden to step in where legislators fear to tread, as in recent school-segregation or suffrage issues.

The most massive reorganization of all occurs in the legislative branch, which now represents local interests better than national ones. Change begins with all 50 states vanishing and reappearing as a dozen or so homogeneous regions, like New England or the Southwest, which are called "Republics." Similarly, the House of Representatives turns into a lower "People's House," of 300 members elected from 100 districts, plus 100 members-at-large, whose broad constituencies are designed to ensure that the national interest be their primary concern.

Out goes the Senate too. Instead, there is a middle, or "Republics' House," with one, two or three members from each region, depending on population. Their jobs? To care for the regions by passing uniform laws, and considering all legislation pertaining to the regions. A new, mainly appointive body, the upper, or "Nation's House," rounds out the government. Partly legislative in function and partly executive, this group watches over the nation's best interests, can declare a national emergency and overrule the courts on questions of constitutionality. Unholy writ. Another desperately needed branch of government, say the fellows, is a planning body: science is now as wild, important and ungoverned a force in politics as industry used to be. "What the planning branch does," explains Wheeler, "is to bring science out into the open, where it can be monitored by the people. We're on the verge of such big things that we absolutely need to plan. Computers and transistors and the whole new field of transplants were all introduced chaotically, without a thought to their implications. We've got to predict future developments and plan for them."

The draft constitution will horrify not only traditionalists but quite a few serious students of government. It seems unduly cumbersome in some respects and naive in others--particularly in the assumption that political and philosophical ideas dating from the time of Newton (or Archimedes, for that matter) are necessarily invalid in the days of Bethe and Feynman. But the document is also full of fascinating ideas and just criticisms of the present Constitution. The fellows know that their draft will never be adopted, but they hope that its ideas will be considered. Says Wheeler: "We want to stimulate thought, get people to realize the Constitution is not so holy, so maybe they would have a Constitutional Convention of their own. After all, if there is to be a new Constitution, it has to come from the people, not from us."

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