and constitutional rot is slower. it's the hollowing out without overtly destroying the forms of constitution government, the kind of making them not work right. think of a floorboard that is rotting away, but can still sort of hold you up until the day it can't. >> you note we might overuse the definition of constitutional crisis. you beg the question in this piece, at what point does a bad president doing bad things become a problem of constitutional magnitude, let alone a crisis of constitutional magnitude. are we at the problem stage yet? where do you situate us as all this unfolds? >> so look, i think the question -- one of the things about the term constitutional crisis is it really doesn't have a fixed meaning which is part of the point of the piece, that we all feel like we are in a really dark and dangerous time, and yet