Constitutional (and other issue-based) pop quizzes for our presidential wannabes--could this be a campaign innovation whose time has come?

Is everybody else as excited as I am by this new form of (for want of a better term) political street theater being pioneered by that fine writer Rick Perlstein?

I guess I should back up a bit. As I've noted occasionally, to date I consider myself a noncombatant (is there such a thing as an enemy noncombatant?) in the 2008 presidential campaign, if only on the ground that, for Pete's sake, it's still the first half of 2007! Gimme a break!

Perhaps because I've been treating this way-too-early "campaign" basically as background noise--something to be filtered out as best my sensory apparatus can--I haven't found as much charm in Mike Gravel as some other folks apparently have. If I were to be tempted by one of the "other guys," it would probably be Gov. Bill Richardson.

Sure, Gravel has spoken bluntly on some subjects--mostly Iraq--where the more serious candidates tend to tread more lightly. But it's a long way from there to selling himself as presidential timber.

(Please don't come back at me brandishing the infinitely flimsier credentials of, well, all the GOP hopefuls. The fact that this clownpack is the best the Republican Party can come up with says most of what needs to be said about their party. If Gravel were seeking the Republican nomination, he would be a giant among intellectual bobble-head dolls. But that still wouldn't make him presidential material.)

Anyway, Rick Perlstein, blogging from the Take Back America hootenanny in D.C. has an interesting report on Gravel's speech there today. Rick gives our Mike G props for his historic role in making the Pentagon Papers part of the public record, but makes clear that he's not so thrilled with the present-day Mike Gravel.

In his speech, Gravel noted that the Constitution itself isn't a notably democratic document. It seems he has a plan to get around that inconvenient document to bring power back to the people.

Mike Gravel disdains the Constitution. That's fine. A lot of great Americans - including the abolitionists - disdained the Constitution (they pointed out that it was a document that, then, countenanced slavery). And, like many of us, he despises Dick Cheney and George Bush. But here's what I just learned fifteen minutes ago:

Mike Gravel seems to have no idea what's in the Constitution.

I chased Gravel down as he was leaving, shoulder to shoulder with Ralph Nader. It gave me no pleasure to ask him, "Senator, isn't what you just described a 'bill of attainder'?"

I wasn't quite sure I quite got his attention (or perhaps, horrifyingly, he wasn't familiar with the phrase), so I elaborated. "Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution specifies that you can't pass a law to punish things that weren't against the law when the newly invented 'crime' was committed."

(I didn't add that this was the wisest stopgap to tyranny the framers of the Constitution devised - imagine, just imagine, if George W. Bush could suddenly have directed Trent Lott and Tom Delay to invent some ex post facto crime with which to incarcerate some inconvenient political enemy?)

Here's the exchange that ensued:

"Are you a Constitutional expert?"

"No, I'm a journalist."

"Well, Congress can do any goddmaned thing that it wants."

I guess it's sort of a Michael Moore moment--except without Michael Moore, and without cameras rolling, which actually makes it not so much like a Michael Moore moment after all.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but surely Rick is on to something here. Maybe the other candidates ought to take this as a warning that they're subject to ambush-style pop quizzes on How Our American Government Works, and other issues to be determined.

Well, not the Republican candidates. They don't get out so much. Out of range of their handlers, that is.