Second, this would cause a vast diversion of political attention and resources in a country that is already too diverted from governance toward what one might call identity-issues. Would the debate on health-care reform, for example, really be enriched by a national referenda to enshrine (or forbid) the single payer? For this is just the sort of amendment-a statute by any other name-that occurs in states that have such mech-

Philip Chase Bobbitt, Philip Chase Bobbitt - Refl…, loc. 265