She means it absolutely seriously, and much of the argument of her book is how the eighteenth century aspirations of the American constitution has hardened into stone, into bone, and how it has in recent decades become pretty much unamendable.
Now the US constitution is well over 200 years old, and showing its age. Many of its fundamentals -- the Electoral College, the Senate -- were intended to prevent and negate popular sovereignty, and have succeeded very well even as popular sovereignty -- "We the People" -- has become the nearly universal expectation. How does the United States move forward when so much amendment is needed and so little is possible?
In general, the mid-nineteenth Canadian constitution is much more flexible and much less in need of fundamental amendment, in my opinion, but the problem is there. The Canadian amending formula is not yet fifty, but our constitution is also pretty much unamendable. Who's writing a big popular book about that?
