Sure. Where do you place primary responsibility for
the sorry state of affairs that exists today in this nation?
I think that political responsibility must rest with those who have political power. And the only people who have any power now are those of us who are alive now. So I'm very reluctant to go too far back in time looking for responsibility.
The most important lesson that I have learned from that generation which both won our independence and designed our initial constitutional framework is that each generation has the obligation to chart its own course and to accept responsibility for any of its own failures to competently deal with the challenges with which it is presented. So, if we don't like the way we are operating, it's our job to fix it.
The Constitution is certainly not a straightjacket. Certain of the provisions of the constitution are very definite in meaning (e.g., the minimum age for a Senator), but many of the provisions were intended to be more indefinite (e.g., "due process of law"). When a competent draftsman utilizes indefinite terms, he does so for the purpose of delegating to future decision-makers the right and obligation to provide greater definition to the terms. It is therefore no accident that the same indefinite terms might be defined somewhat differently by different decision-makers in different times. That is just one of the ways in which the Framers provided us with the flexibility that we have needed to deal with problems and needs that were totally unforeseeable to them. And, on top of all that, they provided us in Article V with the ability to amend the Constitution more or less as we see fit.
So, I think we have all the tools, we have all the power and we therefore have all the responsibility for our own political environment.