Archibald: Don’t know how to vote on revised Alabama constitution? Perfume the polecat

This is an opinion column.

I guess perfect really is the enemy of good.

I have a long history of opposing new amendments to the Alabama Constitution.

And why not? It holds 978 amendments, many of them ill-conceived and questionably intended. At best, in a given year, proposed amendments are Band-Aids on a septic wound, gauze over the gangrenous infection that has pained Alabama for 121 years .

Alabama’s is the longest constitution in the world, they say, and would take a week to read if you did nothing for that week but sit down to read with a feeding tube and a caffeine drip.

But I bet you’d never finish. You’d fall into a catatonic state, like most Alabama voters, and dream of better football days and simpler times.

So what happens when lawmakers offer us – along with a bunch of amendments – an imperfect plan to approve a reorganized state constitution? What’s a serial naysayer to say?

This new revision is not exactly an amendment, but not exactly a new constitution, no matter what some people want to call it. It’s a reshuffling that removes some racist and outdated language – which is good. It would do some other housekeeping, too, like getting rid of stuff that has already been appealed and arranging local amendments by county. If passed it would shave 11 percent of its mind-numbing words, too. I don’t know if it would lose its claim as the longest constitution in the world, but it would still be the longest state constitution in this country, by far. But shorter is better than longer, at least when it comes to constitutions. So that’s pretty good too, I guess. It would at least make it more manageable .

RELATED: See all the proposed amendments on today’s ballot.

That’s what it will do. But it’s just as as important to say what this recasting doesn’t do.

It doesn’t fix the glaring issues in the 1901 constitution, a document created for the specific purpose of legalizing white supremacy in Alabama. It doesn’t eliminate policies forged in the racist intent of that document, and cemented through decades of systemic racism.

It doesn’t change any laws at all, because it was not meant to. It was meant to glow up a skunk.

So it’s a quandary. We’d certainly be better off if that skunk stunk less. But a Febrezed skunk is still a skunk. Even if it’s one we might not notice quite as much.

It still gives all the power to that bunch in the Legislature, making cities and towns have to show feat and grovel for scraps, despite the current party in power’s traditional beliefs that government closest to home is the best government.

RELATED: Read the language on the ballot

It still limits how money can be raised, and spent, not just by the state but by cities and counties and towns.

It’s still a skunk. A giant, ever-present, odiferous skunk.

It’s still a good try, a needed attempt. But my big fear is that once this revision is passed, the effort to replace Alabama’s steaming pile of constitution will be flushed and forgotten, that attempts to change this state from the ground up will simply die .

But alas, perfect is the archenemy of good. And maybe good is the nemesis of just a little better.

So perhaps we do the good we can when we can do it.

You can’t look at this new restructuring – minus the overt racism of the old constitution, tidied up a little and looking more fit – and decide you want to stick with the old one.

You’ve got to spray perfume on that polecat and vote for it, Alabama. Even if you have to hold your nose to do it.

John Archibald is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for AL.com.