Angus King is the anti-partisan, independent United States Senator from the cranky Yankee state of Maine. He is giving us a conversational civics lesson in the tradition of James Madison and also of Schoolhouse Rock, the kids’ TV explainer.

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James Madison.

Senator King has been in the thick of the frenzy in Donald Trump’s Washington, with a certain distinction. His tone on the Senate floor has been measured, his language old-fashioned, and his message a deadly warning. It’s the Constitution itself that’s at risk. What’s at stake, he has been saying, is the famously balanced U.S. Constitution, “this clumsy system” of self-rule, he calls it, that is “the mainspring of our freedom.” And it is under direct assault as never before in these first weeks of a new presidency. Rescuing that “we the people” charter will mark our place in history, Angus King is telling us. Losing it would mark the end of the American experiment.

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