on saturday august 24 book tv on cspan2 takes you live to the washington convention center for annual coverage of the library of congress national book festival. since 2001 we featured hundreds of in-depth and uninterrupted author talks at festival, this year's guests including librarian of congress carla hayden, pulitzer prize winner. and more. the library of congress national book festival live saturday august 24 beginning at 9:00 a.m. eastern on cspan2. ♪ the house will be in order. >> is your see spence l bates 45 years of covering congress like no other. since 1979 we have been your primary source for capitol hill

providing balance unfiltered coverage of government. taking into or the policy is debated and decided all of the support of america's cable company. c-span 45 years and counting. powered by cable. >> it is my distinct honor here to introduce my colleague, is the kind of person about whom people in my position usually say he needs no introduction. but that then it raises an awkward question about why i'm here so i will introduce and he is the director of social cultural constitutional studies here were he also holds the best and public policy. the founder and editor of national affairs he is also senior editor a contributing editor at national review and a contributed opinion writer at the "new york times." in his role as director of

social cultural constitutionaldi studies i suppose i should point out he is in some sense my boss. so he will be reviewing my performance as i review his today. which is about as good a visit example as we can find. we are here to discuss yuval's new book and if i may say so it is his best to book yet american covenants how the constitution unified in our nation" again. it is a book that i should say modest but politically ambitious. it proposes that the cure for many of our modern discontent in the united states can be found by recovering the wisdom of our existing constitution. it could be said to elaborate on the constitution siri of itself.

and among the things this book reminds us of is that the unity that we speak of and e pluribus unum is not a once and done accomplishment but a constant achievement that needs to be renewed. it is pretty common for conservatives to suggestge we he forgotten some of the genius of our constitution. but at this point almost countercultural of the right no less than the left to suggest the constitution has not yet been exhausted. that is the bold proposal of this book i hope you'll join me and giving yuval around a welcome of applause as he elaborates on it. [applause]

>> thank you very much. i appreciate that enormously. i think in my capacity as some kind of unofficial editor position you are my boss. a one way or another there will be a report. [laughter] what's really great to be here and what an amazing room of friends to talk about this book with. it is staggering to me. i am particularly excited for the opportunity to say a few words about the book here at home i would say. with all of you. for one thing c this is a book about the constitution it's a book about law and politics and policy is about political culture and institutional design and all of things we love to do here at ai and my little corner of ai. but more than that, speaking with all of you in particular about the book and doing it here

let's say a little more personally than i might about how i came to write this book. iwa want to do that in two brief ways and then pull out a couple ofof themes from the book for y. andic then we can chat which is really what i'm here for. to begin with on one kind of a personal note for me this book is a natural extension of work i've been doing for a decade and more about the roots and character of the political division in america. i wrote a book in 2012 about the sources of the left/right design 2016 what you might call the up/down divide. the ways in which the fracturing and fragmentation of american life has opened in the chasm between elites and the broader public. our trust in them. and as i say that, i do notice that all these problems have gotten worse over that time. so i should probably stop writing these books. but the path of these books for

me has been a kind of path from diagnosis toward prescription, from thinking about how things have come apart to thinking at least some about how they might be brought back together. and this new book for me is a kind of natural next step on that path. it's about what it would mean to be a more unified society. now and how that might actually be brought about, at least in our political life, which is, of course, only part of our life together. and it also draws on an argument that was central to the second of those books that i mentioned, a book called the fractured republic from 2016 that argued in part that we have moved in our public life in america from a long period that began in the middle of the 20th century, in which something like liberalization was the moving force of our liberalization was the moving force of our politics. cultural liberalization for the last economics of the right in which the two parties wanted to both claim the term freedom for themselves into a new phase

where what people feel they lack isdi not just an individual liberation, but they sense of belonging. what we hunger for, what a successful movement would offer now is not just freedom but also solidarity. it looks like nationalism and identity politics to advance right or left ideas under the banner of solidarity. we need to do better than that, but a lot of our institutions and practices and priorities are going to have to find ways to articulate in terms of solidarity. and i think this is also true of the constitution. we are used to the case in terms of freedom and individual rights and that case is true but we lost sight in terms of solidarity, forming a more perfect union which after all

this the first kind of case that iti makes for itself. i think that we need to acquaint ourselves with that case and that is part of what the book tries to do, it is a case for thety constitution in terms of solidarity. but for me this case for the american system in terms of holding it together runs deeper than that and that is the second part i would highlight for you. i am an immigrant to the united states. he was born in israel, my family moved when i was eight and i mostly grew up here but i'm nationalist, became an american at the age of 19 and the federal building in newark new jersey in 1996. it was a big ceremony, lots of people o from lots of places and at the end the retired federal judge i remember i was 19 so maybe he was 40. [laughter] he got up to speak and i thought he was going to talk about the

founders and he didn't do anything likehe that. he gave a short talk and said from today on you have to think of america in the first person plural. that's the phrase he used and i'm quite sure i wasn't the only citizen who didn't know what that meant and iat was glad it wasn't on the english test but he explained it from now on we have to say we and us when we talk about america. not them and they and that is it that's all he said and i remember beinge disappointed. but here i am more than a quarter-century. in fact it was profound, exactly what n we needed to hear not to just immigrants but we americans. we had to work at finding ways to understand the country not in terms of those people that would ruin t everything if they lose t in terms of we, all of us who in some way share the future with americans. that isn't a case of being nice

or for a truce or civility. you make a truce with enemy. citizens are not enemies. our options are not war or truce. we are meant to argue with each other precisely because we do share. we are arguing about that future and the way it ought to be and the stakes are high because we are weak. it's actually a veryy important word. it's the first word of that amazing second sentence of the declaration of independence. it's the first word of the constitution. we the people of the united states, and that's not a coincidence. both of the documents are expressed in the first person pluralf because they are both examples of a people taking ownership of the common fate of the nation acting together politically. the declaration has a common commitment to a set of ideals that then underlines the decision and act of separation taken.

the constitution builds on that premise and embraces the principles but it does something that in practical terms may be even more complicated. it establishes the political framework for a society that generallypl agrees about the fundamentaldo principles but not with the principles mean as a practical matter in a lot of situations. but disagrees about a lot all the time. the constitution is exactly about how to make that a reality as a practical matter in the face of division. and for cohesion and the divided time.. we are short of unity and cohesion in america. and the notion that the constitution could help might seem strange at first. americans are divided and polarizedeo.

it is a relic of the past age or that it is undemocratic and makes it difficult to adapt to the changing times so that in this divided era it could only make the problems worse. the book argues that that is roughly the opposite of the truth. the constitution is not the problem we face. it's much more like the solution. it was intended to address the problem that we have, the challenge of how a divided society can hang together and govern with the sophisticated grasp of the nature of political division. in part to unify. it's to see what it isn't with the characteristic modes of operation look like and how it shapes the public and then by

looking through the purposes of the history of the various institution, federal-aid congress, the presidency and the constitutional systemti of it considers those in light of prioritizing national unity. and finally in the last chapter that tries to think about what unity actually means in light of all of it. let me offer five quick propositions that emerge from considering the constitution in this particular light. propositions that are the pillars of the argument of the book that are contested or unfamiliar. it is about the unity it self in a free and diverse society that emerges from what seems to be the contradiction in the thinking of james madison in particular.

madison is the figure who sought most about division and cohesion and action. he values unity in our lesley and thinks it's an essential purpose and he wasn't alone in that. it's all about the need for union. madison also thinks that unanimity impossible in a free society on any subject of significance. he says it very bluntly as long as the reason continues, different opinions will be formed, period. so it's not only possible but essential and yet it will always be the scene of intense disagreement so what does unity mean and that kind of circumstance? this is the first proposition i want to put tooo you. it is rooted in the premise that

in a free and therefore diverse society, unity doesn't mean thinking alike. it means acting together. thinkingt or acting and unity meansit acting together. this distinct notion is essential to understand. the constitution is ultimately enhanced and i say acting together not thinking alike and that forces us to ask how can we act together when we don't think alike. all of the institutions that it creates are intended among the other purposes to answer a that question. a lot of what this mysterious and frustrating to many americans now about the system is a function of being an answer to that question, being designed to enable people.

again and again the forms the constitution offers ways of compelling consideration and negotiationti of forcing differt factions into common action and into bargaining and dealmaking. that common action isn't always cordial. confrontational and includes dealing with people we disagree with which can be slow and unpleasant but it's directed to finding the accommodations by recognizing that we do disagree yet we do belong together. that is not simply a matter of counting heads. some criticism in the constitution argued that fractional divisionju should be the result by simple majority votes and they dismiss the systems bizarre complicateden arrangement of overlapping

institutions as undemocratic, pointless, but the constitution is a lot more sophisticated than the critics. it's much more sensitive than the dangers of social division. it accepts the premise only the majority rule can legitimate public action but also embodies the countervailing insight which is unavoidable to anybody familiar with the history of democracy and history of the united states that the majorities can sometimes act aggressively to end it recognizes the narrow majority in particular are often just artifacts of the system that created. they don't tell something real about the society so it demands the popular consensus be demonstrated by multiple durable reasonably broad majority that present themselves in the institutions that are elected by different constituencies in different ways. in our system, meaningful policy victories require broad

coalitions not narrow majorities. you would think that would bet obvious but if you look at the politics for five minutes today you see that it's not obvious at all. everybody seems to have forgotten. building coalitions through negotiations and competition is now taken to be b a trail, a betrayal of party, failure, politicians promise to fight for their voters asr they should. but too many have forgotten what it means to fight in the system so to gain advantage in the broad coalition that advances the priority. they now behave as they are fighting refusing to negotiate. but in fact, that's what losing looks like. giving up the only power you have because when you win an election and the american system it's a seat at the negotiating

table. the fact we forgotten that is a fact that it's so out of whack and a part of why the politics politics feelsso broken and div. because it is the primary venue for bargaining and accommodation. acting together when we don't think alike. that is why it is particularly disturbing to find the attitude thatis negotiating with the othr side is a betrayal or failure it is the job description and that has seeped into a lot of how we think about fixing congress. it's not hard to find people who think that and there's even a kind of bipartisan community of congressional reform in washington. so while we are often the token conservatives and a lot of these, but beneath what seems

like agreement at the beginning of the conversation, agreement thatat congress is dysfunctiona, there's actually a very profound disagreement about what function is failing to perform and what is congress not doing. mostst people would answer that it's not passing the legislation that is essential for the crucial challenge of the moment. it i seems what congress is failing to do isn't so much advance my policy agenda what it is failing to do is act together when we don't think alike and it has enormous implications for prescribing remedies. people are frustrated with the failure to move legislation rather than to advance some idea of cohesion.

they have in mind something like parliamentary government as a model of what it is that wes ae missing. but that kind of model is ultimately likely to lead to a durable legislation and more important, it would undermine the capacity of the politics to engage in common work. theoi reforms should empower committees and factions not leadership, not reimbursing the super majority they are the reason there is no cross work at all so that is the reform of congress should make cross partisan bargaining more likely than making it less necessary which is how they work now. asking what is the purpose of the institution, so what is it that it is now failing to do

like our sins of the purpose of understanding the executive is dominated by the kind of progressive prioritization of policy actions over the prioritization of social cohesionin in fact we think abot the presidency now in legislative terms. we think that it's a representativeve institution and the purpose is to advance the policy agenda of the parties that won the last election but the presidency, the unitary office can't be representative of a diverse society of 300 million people and it's an administrative office. certainly thehe president is intended to have a role driving the agenda putting some questions on the table and setting up some priorities, but the kind of bargaining and accommodation that it's supposed to move can't really happen withinn the office. that means the president can advance unity by the sort of policy action.

the distinct role the president has in advancing the cohesion along with the other important roles is particularly the unity has to do not so much with energetic policy advocacy. but with what alexander hamilton called steady administration. contemporary because they value their ability to drive the policy action. essentially claiming to do the work of the legislators when the legislators won't do it. they've dramatically underemphasized the administration when every president startsta his term with undoing everything that his predecessors did and then spend the rest of his term doing everything the successor would undo we are left in a place where the kind of steadiness that is necessary to the work oe the executive is no part of the job and the effect of that is not just bad for the administration will also the national cohesion. it raises the stakes of our election and the temperature of the politics because it means the key questions don't get resolved by bargaining and

coalition building but by sharp turns andn everything depends n the presidents. my fourth proposition, the fourth implication looking at theh constitution through the lens of national unity is reform to prioritize the steady administration not assertive policymaking. when it comes to the third branch of the court, think of an agenda reform as a way to think about that. for the vision our great public disputes need to be resolved in the work of the legislature above all. the most valuable service that the courts provide to the cause of national unity is the

policing of the rules and boundaries of the constitution was on. the courts have actually been improving onhii this and unlikee elective branches, they are close to serving the constitutional purposes that they were aey generation ago. they do need more of a focus on constitutional structure rather than the policing of the rights but the transformation of the courtsry in this century have bn extraordinary to see. when it comes to the course of the final proposition that i would argue you is a function of the transformation that the lesson of conservative success that we should be fighting for the constitution not against it. they had every reason to give up on the judiciary in the second half. but rather than give up on it they set up the proper purpose to a project that began as

intellectual work much of it done here today and then evolved into institutional work the federalist society and elsewhere supported by political action that enabled the transformation of the judiciary. it was a kind of labor of love of the constitution and that is exactly how we should think about the constitutional challenges that we face now. we are now with regards to congress in particular roughly where the ride wasri with regars to the 1970s. the idea that we could reform congress to do its job seems hopelessly naïve but it's not more than the notion that antonin scalia and ron silverman had when they were ai scholars 50 years ago and we could have the originalist judges. strategic naïveté is crucial to the successful reform work. you have to be naïve about what you love the most.

you should be a little bit naïve about the country and not so optimistic but to be hopeful and so to fight for the constitution and not against it. there's a lot of people now including some on the right that are able to give up on the constitution and who can dismiss it as inadequate to the society that is divided. but i think they are exactly wrong. theex constitution was intended exactly to address the problem we have now the challenge of governing ourselves despite the division. it might bring us closer together to understand ourselves as onede society engaged in comn work despite the diversity of the beliefs and desires and interest. helping the constitution do that requires understanding how it was meant to do that and transforming that understanding into an agenda of reform and

interaction. it's also what a lot of you do every day so thank you for that and thank you for being here. >> thank you. we are going to have a conversation and then open up for questions from you and the remote audience which i believe we will be submitting under the hashtag ai american covenant. so get your questions ready. i want to start byy talking abot the sort of comparative constitutionalism. so much that it raises the question areth others inferr or is ours better suited for us? >> it's a great question.

i think that there's a little bit of both. the united states, our system in a sense is so effective that it allows us to compare ourselves with democracies that have similar problems. so, you find political sciences saying the belgian system is more representative. the united states is not like belgium or norway. it's like brazil and india. it isy a vast, insanely huge democracy and it works about as well as the europeans. and that is because our system is so well suited to the situation. i'm not suggesting they should adopt thei system. i don't know. they seem to be doing fine. but i do think we shouldn't adopt their system becausese thr system is not nearly as well

adept atth dealing with the complexities of a vast democracy like this. the core differences the parliamentary systems do empower narrow majorities. if you have a majority coalition, you get all the power so you lose the coalition. so the mandate means the united states does not work that way. it doesn't empower the narrow majority. it tells those narrow majorities to grow if you want to do something that endures. that is very frustrating to the narrow majorities every recent president has found himself in a meeting thinking why am i talking to these people i just won theel election and it answes so day-to-day. the system just works that way and unless you have a very large majority, and i think the democrats learned they have a filibuster proof majority that's not on this challenge you don't just get to do whatever you

want. the majority is the source of legitimacy and great trouble and danger. it's especially alert too that second problem. so i think that it's well-suited to the situation as a result of that. it's the human nature and some of the challenges of political life in ways that are probably objectively superior to the system but not in every way. it is in some ways less representative. my advice to friends abroad is a little bit like the advice to the french, make your own tradition and let us do the same. >> there was a blow that consider the constitution to be

inaccurate. i wonder is it true they think it is sort of lost beyond hope and recovery and it's a great constitution but you yourself in the book document all the ways you have the spirit in the shell of the system and they don't think ofit themselves as anti-constitutional so much. i sayi a few things. we find ourselves saying that we areou post something, maybe we should just stop. [laughter] we don't, i don't think the fundamental political questions are different from one time to another. i don't. creating a world worthy of our children and the answer to the

questions more or less look alike all the time. there are ways to improve, there are ways that we fall back to, but the core political questions do not change fundamentally. they would have the temptation to say that now in our time things are really bad. these people are really awful and they've broken and if the generation that lived in the 60s didn't say that and the 1960s didn't sayay that, i don't think we have a very good excuse as the generation living in the 2020 is to say that. thatki kind of view that this is so broken we don't have to try anymore is a form of escapism. in a forward-looking country like this of preserving the capacity to renew ourselves and make progress and it would be

very hard work now. if you lookhe around the countr, i don't think that is what would happen. and i would say the same thingth to people on the left if you eliminate the protections for the minority rights in the systems, you will discover progressive law professors and traditional catholics are non-majority. you may love them but they are not a themselves in very grave trouble as we all would. so that doesn't mean that they are wrong. it doesn't mean that it just means all of us should understand ourselves as belonging sometimes to minorities and sometimes majorities and therefore we

should want a system that empowers majorities in a way that is also protected and i think we have such a system and it is worth fighting for even though it is v very hard. >> it is not insistently so. it operates on the conservative premise about the human nature which are the same of the founders. it quotes the federalist papers more. ifer you are the sort of conservative that is interested in policies and smaller government and smaller federal government in particular, what is in this vision for you and.

this is not a libertarian book or a book about how to spend less. i think that would be nice but i don't think that at the moment the highest priority for conservatives ought to be thinking about the size of government in that sense. we are in a moment where the basic form of the government, the basic character of the politics is on the table in a way that should worry us and that means we have to be making the argument for the basics and remind people why they are an inheritance isn't a burning pile of garbage but an extraordinary prize. we get to make the most of the kind of freedoms and possibilities and institutions that we have and we should begin by being grateful for and that's

what i would do within the working system that is what i would do in the congress that is functioning. i think in a funny way the kind of debate that we think of traditionally about how to reform medicare or how to think about the defense budget does or nott happening in the right way at this point. how to think about the role of government, so i think that traditional policyol debates matter enormously. i know where i stand on this bub it is a book about how to get to the place that we are having that in a way that didn't turn out well. >>

>> one of the suggestions that you make in the book is an expansion of the house and. this is a counterintuitive idea in some respects. most of us when we look at the house we don't think i wish there were more of thesee peopl. i think of it as a form of constitutional maintenance. the house was intended to grow so that it remains somewhat connected to the growth of the population and it also did grew after every census until the 1920 census.

it is a way into a set of other reforms in congress. when you talk to members about changing the rules in the house and senate they all think they are big problems and none of them arele happy with their lifestyle as members of congress but it doesn't occur to them that things could change. with other ideas how the congress couldto be improved too its constitutional work creating that moment could be useful and so it's a way of bringing congress into line with the

intention of the framers and a way ofr helping it be better representative and creating an opportunity for those other kind of reforms. i think that it's a plausible way forward. how does it appeal to the average member to say your importance should be diluted by adding 150 and then growing much more slowly after that every ten years. i think the argument to members is that the house is meant to be more representative than it is. the average member of the house now represents million 800,000 people at the time of the ratification in the first house every member represented about 30,000. they are very skeptical.

>> more members would make the place work better and i think that is a good sign. >> it isn't critical and it strikes me the two federalist papers number ten and number 51 are ones that come in for the most criticism in your book and you might want to talk a little bit about that. >> those are the big city federalists. they have a lot to say about some of the questions that we are talking about here. this is very much a madisonian book. more than anybody else.

his voice certainly is heard more than anyone else's in the book and i think that madison stands out in our political transition for worrying about division. there are voices that worry about social order and dynamism like hamilton. there are voices that worry about something like social justice e and equality, like jefferson. the voices are there in the traditional at the best, the right and the left. madison worries about social cohesion and unity in a way that almost nobody else does. but without a civil war. it's what he worries about above all when he thinks about of thes in the era framing of the constitution. so the book learns a lot from him but i think there is a way that at certain times madison is dismissive of the need for civic virtue. he thinks the system can work as

a kind of machine that resolves the problem of bad citizenship by the operation. madison isn't always like that. and you can almost see him kind of correcting himself when he goes too far in this direction but i think that if you want examples of going too far in this direction, dismissive of the republicanism and of a certain kind he basically says the system is a substitute for the absence of virtue. the best counterargument to this is also from madison and the book emphasizes those because i think those counter arguments are correct. it is absolutely essential that the citizens in our society have ain certain idea of the responsibilities and that there be a kind of responsibility of the virtue. the wordma responsibility is vey madisonian. it used to bee the case in the dictionary it said that madison's note was the first

place responsibility was ever used in english. then they found an earlier example. that was very useful to say apparently the word was not in general use. and it was really both madison and hamilton use it in the federalist and i think that it describes the role of the american citizen and as someone whoak takes ownership of the society they live in. it's a very republican concept and i think it is absolutely essential for the citizenship in and the public. so, the madison is preferable. >> i want to maybe push back a little bit on your thoughts about the courts policing the structure of the government.

do we really think that the court can play this intensive role keeping congress and the presidency in their place, which is directly as you know it wasn't the court that kept the congress from delegating. it wasio a kind of institutional self response. >> congress didn't want to but part is this peculiar fact when it comes to congress, the institution doesn't want the power that it has, which is nots a problem that the framers really thought about. it is not it did not occur to them congress just wouldn't want to have the power to send to the direction of the politics. the courts are reactive. i put it this way and i put it this way in the book, congress

frames the legal frameworks for the future it is a forward-looking institution. the president operates in the present and lives in the present tense only and congress looks back and reviews, i'm sorry, the court looks back and reviews actions in the past. so the role is constrained by that fact to begin with they have to respond to the complaints. they don't act on their own accord generally speaking. and they can only review the past actions. they do have ang essential role making sure that it's maintained. it takes out of the reach of the majorities into some restrain the other branches and i do think that the situation created

by the willful under the action of the congress does two things at the same time. it's over action by the executives, which the courts need to restrain, and in itself it creates a problem that the courts need to address. addressing under action is very hard. we are finding this now in the current term and when the term looks at the difference and thinks about howt to handle a kind of delegation of authority it needs to findmp a way to control congress to do its own job and ultimately to write laws that are clear and more distinct and precise than congress tends to do. it's not simply possible to tell congress to do that. it doesn't have a mechanism for solving the problem that way. but i do think that by shifting the balance of the delegations,

but putting more of the power to interpret the law in its own hands where it belongs, that is what the judges do, it can create some pressure to do its job. congress has to want the power to legislate and that's going to requiree changes in the incentives and members of congressac more than. which brings us to the topic of political parties.. a very common critique is that the founders didn't want to have parties and parties split up almost immediately. the development of the system ended up actually helping the constitutional divide. >> my great hero i think i do

love martin van buren and don't gett me started. martin van buren was a politician's politician. he ran for everything. and he won everything. he never lost an election. he was a major, county commissioner, state legislator, state attorney general in new york and governor of new york. the extraordinary thing is that he saw the party system collapsing. at the beginning and framing the constitution, there was a sense that parties might not be necessary. it was written in a very peculiar time, a peculiar time in england where the structure

of the party system was changing from the party of the king and party of parliament to basically parties of left and right and the united states when there was a kind of agreement about the revolution that crosses what we would think of as the left and right and it seemed like durable parties might be avoidable. then the constitutional system got going it immediately became obvious that the parties were necessary that there needs to be some way to organize the electoral politics before people got elected. the parties began through the work of jefferson and madison. they came to be organized into two parties who were veryti distinctlyly american. the electoral college which is a very strange thing requires absolute majorityr of electors for someone to be elected

president. if no one gets the majority than congress, the house decides who will be president. if there are more than two candidates it's basically going to go to the house. almost every time. this happened in 1800 and it happened againn in 1824 and a particularly bad way where the system was totally officiated. there were four major candidates they were all democrats and the difference between them were personalities. became a kind of policy difference. and so, martin van buren is a senator at this point. the election goes to the house. among the many things about that were the two leading candidates had the same running mate and that person was elected vice president when no one was elected president so the senators had nothing to do. they were sitting in a gallery of the house watching and martin van buren describes this in his memoirs was sitting there thinking this shouldn't be

happening in congress this should be happening inside of a political party. deciding who should be the leader of the party. and he proceeds to offer a set of ideas for how the parties can become the mechanism for selecting candidates for office, party conventions, local party offices come all kinds of processes for nominations and selection thatat could help the american system work better as a two-party system. two broad and coherent party coalitions that on paper make no sense whatsoever. big broad parties train people on the coalitions and then those people are ready to build coalitions in congress. it's a system that is the kind of missingth piece of the puzzle of the constitution. and it's worked very well for us. in a lot of ways it was the

child of martin van buren. the challenge today has a lot to do with the fact that the system was such a good fit for the constitution that the progressives who got tired of the constitution also got tired of the party and for the same reason because it is about coalition building. it's not about clear decisive policy action. woodrow wilson and him and others from the end of the century came to the view thatmo the system needed to be much more responsive and accountable on the policy agendas and so in sense that they should be much more ideological and through various mechanisms have made our party system more audiological but also more polarized and much more of a fit for the constitutional system. our parties as institutions of thetu a selection are very weak. partisanship is strong when the parties are weak and i think

that is a lesson, kind of ironic that we have learned over and over for the last 50 years. and it's time to rethink the way the parties choose candidates. igo think it would be good to rethink in this martin van buren direction. i don't think we can do that, conventions and backgrounds and ways of choosing candidates that don't involve voters. no politician is going to get up and say you are the problem you need to let us choose the candidate for the office because you are choosing.mp i think we can do better on that. >> when the party selects the candidate is not what do the craziest people at the fringes of the party think we should be saying on election day but rather how do we win the biggest possible majority. that is the parties job. i think that there are ways of doing that it requires the

primary system which are not going to be easy. >> . we have a few minutes before i'm going to open it up for questions. in a book that is so devoted to the possibilities are there any parts of the constitution alongside the parts by reconstruction but any parts that you think are ill considered or if we were starting over that we would need to get rid of? >> i think that we would somewhatk differently. the presidential selection i can imagine ways the balance of federalism would work better if we were starting over. we have in fact here the longest

enduring and most successful democratic republic in the world. there is a tendency i think for us to think of our country but we are not a young country. we are the oldest of the existing democracies. we have had the same, essentially the same institutions of government for 230 years. that is absolutely amazing. that is whatwe stands out about us. americans still sort of think, and you see this in some of the catastrophes we were talking about before. we always have the senseto that this is about to fall apart. it's an experiment it's not really working. you listen to the founding generation. they, certainly thought so, or abraham lincoln in the 1830s had d good reason, but every generation of americans. the national anthem is a song about the barely surviving the night. there is no other country like this. and so, we do tend to think that we are on the verge of collapse.

but we are not on the verge of collapse. we have a lot of work to do, and i think the secret to doing that well is to begin from what we have and see where it w can be helped to work better. so i don't think in terms of starting over. ier don't pretend that i could o better than a system that devolves 230 years in a complicated world and choosing reframing the two houses of congress. i think if we were starting over we would do it differently. i'm not sure we would do it better, and we are not starting over, so we can think about the incremental reform and see where they really are problems. we are not always doing a scene where the problems really are. in some ways, this book is an exercise. chesterton saidd he had a couple of ways of saying this, this an analogy if you inherit a piece of property and there's a fence on the property and you think

you want to take it down, make sure you understood why it was put up. you may want to take it down but if you don't understand why it was put up, you're probably making a mistake because if somebody did the work of putting it there and it is essential to see whyy that is and what was te solution, i think it's very important for us to approach the institutions of government in this way. we may need to change them but it's crucial we understand why they are the way they are before we do that, and that's what the book tries to do. >> all right. i'm going to open it up to you. if you have a question, please raise your hand. i will call on you, and then a microphone will come. there's a microphone right by you. you can go first. >> thank you so much for that. it's always been fantastic. so,on the most dysfunctional aspect or one dysfunctional aspect of the system is the relationship of the state and

federal powers. and it seems in the attempt to restore would require an aggressive federalism such as seeing the red state governors attempting. it's going to get pretty messy and contentious. sickly, there was a review of your book that pushed this point saying we need to bee incremenl and coalition building, but what does that look like in a situation where the federal government doesn't recognize the right of the state governors function that they were meant to constitutionally? >> first of all, i doat think tt it's great and it's worth reading. i certainly agree that federalism is very often the scene of the most significant constitutional contentions in the system and it always has been. federalism was a lot of what the

most intenseat debates at the constitutional convention were about. it was a kind of innovation. you know, they faced the question of whether they have a strong national government where the state essentially is an administrative unit order to have strong states. i think part of what it would take for us to recover something ofof the balance of the american constitution now is to have some more arguments and fights about the balanceee of power between e states and national governments.

the federal government is involved in a lot of things that it is hard to justify its involvement in. and in many ways, the states have invited because the federal government makes it convenient for the states to benefit from services and money while also claiming all kinds of authority. we have a balanced budget amendment and the only reason that is true is the federal government doesn't balance the budget. they didn't have the borrowing power of the national government behind them especially in times of crisis. so, i think the core concept that has to guide the future of federalismsm is that federalisms not layering. federalism involves two channels of power. one federal, one state. we can argue about what belongs in each one. it may be today we think about

whether health care financing should be a federal responsibility. we nationalize medicaid. that's a debate to have. what we can do is intermix them in the way. we do so the federal and government are involved in the same work it's happened in healthcare and education. and neither of them is accountable for it. neither of them have any incentive to constrain themselves because whenever there ishe pressure on that, thy can push it off to the other one. i think we have to find ways to pull them apart again. ronald reagan proposed a kind of deal to the state that the federal government would entirely fund medicaid and in return the federal government would entirely stop funding education and at the time it kind of worked out in such a way that it would balance out. that certainly wouldn't be true today. i think that is the logic of how

we ought to think about reforming federalism. the defined ways to separate these authorities. >> as i recall, the governors were -- >> -- adamantly against this. there was one governor, lamar alexander, who said i will take that deal, and it didn't happen. >> you cite in your book the upside down constitution, which is a really thorough and excellent explanation of those ideas. >> a wonderful book. >> other question? >> you said earlier that we are in a position with regard to congress that is similar to the one conservatives had with the court in the 70s. to me -- and this may be sort of pleasantest thinking, and let me know if you think that -- but to me, it makes sense that the

conservative legal movement was able to have the success that it's had. the established federalist society chapters at law schools where there are people becoming lawyers are going to enter that field, and it doesn't seem to exist for, you know, whoever it would be that would be reforming congress. i'm wondering what you think that might be. >> i guessah i think that what they've succeeded in doingcc is much crazier and more impressive than what i'm suggesting. the idea that you could transform the federal judiciary in a way that we have seen over the last 50 years was not obvious. and i think anybody that would have said that we would get to a place where there is a supreme court majority that is originalist in the sense in which originality some began to emerge here in the 70s would have rightly been thought that's. there was no reason to think you could do that.

.. the case to take congresses for most of congress to want to pay change. that's not that many people. we know them, we go to them with the book and give them the book and said this is what you should do. now tell me what you think about that? why don't you do that? it's going to take time and i think the socialization of a set of ideas about what congress is for, is going to be the work of the coming years on that front. but i do think it is achievable. i think socializing that kind of idea, i would not overestimate what you could do on that front in two years.

i would not underestimate what you can do in 10 years. congress changes fast for good and bad. there's almost no one there now who was there in 2000. until all the people are there now probably not going to be there in 20 years. the work we have to do for you know what we are trying to persuade them of his persuasive at work for a couple hundred people. i think we should try. click the take away there is a congressman change fast but read slow. in the back. yes. sure yes. >> exactly but really appreciate all your work and the talk today. very inspiring breast to work in

washington d.c. i wanted to quickly push back on one point you made during the talk. with past generations did not reform the system fundamentally, we have no right to question in the modern age. that just rinsing back to the original reason why this constitution was necessary was to manage factions and a new age of enlightenment and formulate a new science of politics based on social and cultural factors up it was the founding's were acutely aware of it. i see in our generation the formation of faction and science in a modern's and being completely different than the late 18th century. you got social media, the internet how factions form millions of people we have march on d.c. and a matter of days.

took the civil rights movement months and months to get to that point was to the women's market to that point in the matter of weeks. the formation of faction is very different to me. myce question is do we not desee a new science of politics now to deal with that versus simply aby reiterating the incrementalef reforms of two and a 50-year-old? works great question but first of i would not say we don't have the right to do this. i do think we have the right to do this we should think about what w we want and need and i think we would find the constitution we have is a tremendous resource in answering that question. thisis is not an argument from authority. i don't think we should do things james mattis did because he was jamespe mattis we should ask ourselves if we are persuaded by what he did. we are we should work to preserve it and i am. and i think we ought to be.

part of theec reason for that in some important respects their science is much new than they said it. i think of madison's political science was very rooted in a lot of things we attribute to madison the notion you resolve the factions by increasing their number, if you read before aristotle's politics you see it there. that was not an invention of the princetonn faculty in the 1840s. theyey claimed it as such. i did not federals hamilton does claim thatng is what they're dog and he lists a series of ideas that are just not new. it's important for us to see that too. but by allw, means that the thik about what we need now and think realistically about what we need, what we have and we can

achieve about where the intersection is a what we should do. in a lot of ways would point us in the direction of improving on the constitution we have. not starting over. the example of political action in the 1960s and the 2020s is a good example. the march on washington created by 18 hours of social media has no effect whatsoever. the women's march came and went and nothing happened. on march is only the tip of the surface of what happens in a real political movement. much of which is organizing over timeen to allow the citizens to act and make change in their society. we have a lot to learn from them. a lot of what we do was very careless is very impressed with social media. i tend to be less impressed

because her to wait to distract us from what political action that advances anlo idea of juste looks like. that requires a durable commitment and a sense of how people change their minds and how society moves andor works. think of movement for justice as a take its bearings and the nature of politics. that doesn't mean we do everything james mattis did there many things he did i would not do and we should never do. there are thump some things he did there were outright evil he did own slaves is not something we should ignore. we should build to learn from our tradition by asking ourselves what we need, what it offers us us where there is alignment and i i do think that would lead us to an approach to politics it takes is going to the constitution. you agree?

>> thank you very much. as able to glance through the first few pages of your book and i want to comment on the riding in such elegant clarity look forward to reading it. >> i appreciate that. i worry the rest is not like the introduction. but thank you. [laughter] i am confident it is from having to listen to you this afternoon. i wanted to ask quickly i'm interested in why your title says american covenant rather than american constitution. thank you. >> titles are hard is my first answer. this was not my first title. i try to defer on titles to people who are better at this than i am. there are number people in this room but no i hadn't mined several much worse titles than this for this book. ultimately this title doesn't

make sense for the argument i offer. it's not a covenant in any religious about the distinction between a covenant and a contract is a covenant is understood as describing a relationship. rather than simply as this obligation in terms the violation of which is broken. the americanre constitution describes the shape of the american quality. it describes the way in which we hang together that is more than simply a set of institutions that is more than law and that sense is a little covenantal. the idea of thinking at constitution as covenant an essay called the spirit of 87 for the 200th anniversary of the constitution.

a really wonderful essay. i am grateful to have run across after going seven or eight t titles. >> we have time for some more questions in the very back i can barely see you because of the light. i know that voice. [laughter] [laughter] drinkse major constitutional moments we have a flurry of amendments. beginning with the bill of rights, reconstruction, the progressive era. we stopped. i am wondering whether you address the amendment process in the book or how you think about the amendment process today if you recall a decade or so ago, mark live in your namesake's proposed a series.

series of liberty amendments and the rise of the tea party. analysis of thinko about how we might amend the constitution to make it think about living posts some type oflly or living constitution. how do you think about the amendment process what would those be? >> well, i think the amendment process is appropriately challenging it should be hard to amend the constitution. that is what makes it a constitution. i think you see in some the state constitutions that making it too easy kind of makes a mockery of the constitution. the maryland constitution run 300 pages. it has all kinds of stuff that has nothing to do with constitutional wisdom. the american constitution is 7500 words. it is readable. it's accessible and made sense it's about the same subject it's

the character of our regime. and i do think it should be difficult enough to amend thed k constitution that we only do so and there is a regime a moment like that. part of what that means is in a divided time in the 50/50 america it's verye hard to amend the constitution. the death of the 1990s but not really it was there for the 200th anniversary of the constitution was part of the original bill of rights that did not get ratified. it's as congress cannot raise its own salary have to wait for the next election. it's a wonderful story the student who came up with this idea in an essay and it caught on. >> you got it better grade after it passed. quickset is right he got a pretty broad grade it was not realistic.

other than that the last surge of amendments was in the 1970s. it was not much of a search. the post- civil war amendments of progressive era amendments did come in bunches. and i think they were connected to a moment of reform client had public support behind it. i guess i would say this to you. i do not think there's a problem we confront in this moment with our assist in the solution to it should be a constitutionalnt amendment. i am conservative i like the constitution but we need is to change it. but i think some of the movements we have seen and some have been on the right for constitutional convention for opening things up making things

easier to amend i think all of those are very a likely result in very, very bad ideas being enacted into the constitution. the logic of awareness of such change informs the nature of the amendment process is right. i can certainly beth persuaded e kind ofgi change or another i cn imagine ways you could advance all kinds of ideas that i like and just put them in the constitution. i do not think that's our politics shouldsh work. we should be regime ideas that should be about the structure of the system. the infrastructure of the system not about the policy. at the moment i'm not eager to see a constitutional amendment. >> other questions? yes and that very back i did pick you and then pass you over. >> thank you so much for this has been great. one thing you mentioned throughout the stock is the

inertia s that exists in congres specifically. i've not read your book but i imagine it has forms you would like to see enacted. what do you think will be the marginal reform may be the most doable reform that would have the most purchase in terms of setting it back on the right course? the most unimaginable but actionable reform. >> i talked a little bit about expansion of the house which in some ways would open the path of the reforms. i think if we look for the most plausibly doable reform would have the most t effective. the key for changing some very badpu incentives in the house tt we put aside electoral changes which you cannot do just in congress. i was to empower the committees. for congress to take its lead from the state legislatures that

let committees control floor time would make a dramatic difference in the operation. especially the house in some respects the senate. about one third of the state legislatures do this. wayside of virginia is a committee that passes a bill out of committee with at least one vote from the minority party gets floor time for that bill. that is very much not how congress works. and at the moment most of the work done in congress is just a waste of time. eventually if there is a move to pass legislation on the issue it's just going to get written by a c leadership team it might include the committeeco chair ad it might include the committee staff is not going to be with the members negotiated. ifif you let members fire it wih real bullets you say this negotiation is going tol matter because he'll be a boat on the floor to get this done they would care more about their committee worker. the problem right now is very simple these are ambitious people they want to succeed.

working in hard in committee nothing to their success getting on cable news contributes much more to their success that is what they do they are not crazy that is what they would do if you are an ambitious person is trying to succeed. so thato has to change for the incentives need to tame in the committee as a place to start. >> the dead center here. >> thank you pretty amazing book and congrats. defending the constitution obviously is not as a popular as maybe it was 10 or 20 years ago. there is been some real changes on the part of largely the progressive left. we have not seen at least in my lifetime which i think is a desire to literally blow up the system. it started with harry reid

watering down the filibuster 10 years ago. now it is expanding the court. now it's adding more states. obviously some of those things could backfire on the left. new president donald trump could add more supreme court justices and could happily do so. but this desire to blow up a the system seems very myopic. i'm curious what your thoughts are on that? the idea that there are now people getting close to power that are happy to change the system regardless of what the consequences are even if the ultimatelyi backfire. quick to think they know the consequences would be i think they are probably just wrong about that. the idea of packing the court is not new pete that went much further than the last demonstrated in the 1930s. and by a democratic party with very similar views what's wrong with the constitution.

we have seen these kind of things before. the impatience with the filibuster is certainly not new. i think what runs into is the marginal the ideological senators of the majority -- like the minority party love it if it survives. the general attitude that the constitution does not serve us well but we put up with it because we have no choice but if wewe had a choice we would blowt up. that is not a new idea. it is at least as old as woodrow wilson and in some ways it is older than that. and so i think it is something that friends of the constitution of had to contend with for a long time. i think it is fortunate that major change requires much broader majorities that wee are likely to see now. in a funny way both parties are terrified of each other. they think of the other party winds at the end of the republic put the effect of the other went

we've had a 50/50 politics for 30 years paid the stakes are not as high as they say. because if the wrong person gets elected they are just going to spend their time banging their head against thehe wall because they only have a three seat majority. i think the party should spend their time thinking how to broaden their majority if they want to change things rather than how to blow things up. the seem to talk about blowing things up is why have such small majorities or minorities. so it is a politically nettie. i certainly think there are real risks to people have to see why the restraints on democratic power are important. it is true the american leftist turn against all those restraints. the courts the bill of rights one by one the freedom of speech and religion then of speech and the rest are on the way.

the senate, the electoral college that is why the argument for them has to be made. it has to be made in terms that are constitutional and not simply political. i don't like as necessary a new problem is a serious problem but one generations of had to dealan with. >> alright, think of these have an been excellent questions. our time has come to an end. please join me in thanking for his book and his thoughtful comments. [applause] >> if you are enjoying a book tv center for newsletter using a qr code on the screen to receive the schedule of upcoming programs, author discussions, book festivals and more. book tv every sunday on cspan2 or any time online at booktv.org. television for serious readers.

>> saturday american history tv features distort convention speeches but watch notable remarks by presidential nominees and other political figures from the past several decades. this saturday illinois senate candidate barack obama emergence on the national stage gives the keynote speech supporting john kerry for president at the 2004 democratic convention. >> this year in this election we are called to see how we are measuring up. tonight we have more work to do progress 2008 republican convention delegates after strong showing its hundred john mccain. opportunity is what let's hope

become reality. opportunity expands and there's excellence and choice in education. when taxes are lowered. every citizen has affordable health insurance. and constitutional freedoms are preserved. >> watch historic convention speeches saturdays at 7:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv. cspan2 watches c-span live campaign 2024 coverage of the democratic national convention august 19 through the 22nd. you can watch the republican national convention anytime on our website. ♪ >> the house will be in order. >> this year c-span celebrates 45 years of covering were debated and decided all with support of the cable company.