Presidential election will define 'our best selves' says expert

The upcoming presidential election is essentially a referendum on if the country as a whole will represent the nation's best characteristics, according to a speaker at a Constitution Day event at Grand Valley State University.

Akhil Reed Amar, a constitutional expert and scholar, spoke to a capacity crowd at a celebration of Constitution Day, hosted by Grand Valley's Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies.

Amar said that when the Constitution was first written, it was the first document that was voted on by a large mass of people that dictated for posterity how that group of people wanted to be governed. He also said the Constitution fundamentally changed the premise of government worldwide. 

"At the time, this thing (the Constitution) changed the world. There was no democracy on the planet of any significance to speak of, or very little, for eons before this thing comes along," Amar said. "Now, for more than half the planet, democracy’s reign comes along. We won the last century; I like our odds going forward if we stay true to our best selves."

The crafting of the Constitution and its success in bringing modern government and living to the United States over approximately the past 230 years helped provide a model for other countries to follow, moving a significant percentage of the world's people into democracies in other countries. 

"That moment when the document was created generated a certain democratic momentum that served to change everything in America and across the world," Amar said. 

Amar spoke about politics, including the status of the incomplete Supreme Court bench and the process of judicial appointments, along with differences between policy positions of both presidential candidates as they pertained to his interpretation of the Constitution.

Amar said the United States has historically served as a unique place in terms of different groups of people from around the globe being governed under the same system.

"It’s not just that the world is becoming more American, it’s that America is becoming more global," Amar said. "We, uniquely, in the world, are the place where grandchildren of all the other people of the world learned to work together."