One of the points of the American government having checks and balances was so that people who don't give a shit about politics can go about their lives doing what they want, without having to worry about their rights being infringed by the government. It was Lincoln who undermined these rights by denying the states' rights to secede from the union. If the sole interpreter of the constitutional contract is the federal government, then there no longer exist checks and balances (the so-called checks in the federal government itself aren't real). This is why we have presidents who are indifferent to the Constitution.

Also, this beta political habit of trying to jolt people into action is both improper and largely ineffective in America, thanks to our (sometimes dormant) paranoia of taxation and government expansion.