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eastern on american history tv. on cspan2. ♪ is my distinct honor to introduce my colleague yuval levin.n. ramesh ponnuru, he is the person about people my position usualll say he needs no introduction. but that raises an awkward question about why i am here. so i will introduce him. he is the director of social, cultural, constitutional studies where he also holds the best in public policy. the founder and editor of national affairs, he is also a senior editor at the new atlantis to pretty contributing editor and national review contributed opinion writer at the "new york times." in his a role as director of social cultural constitutional studies i suppose i should point out he is my boss.

i guess you'll be reviewing my performance as i review hishi today which is about the good of an example of democratic citizenship as we can find it. we arere here to discuss his new book and if i may say so i think it is his best book yet. "americann covenant" how the constitution unified our nation could again. it is a book i should say epistemically modest but politically ambitious. it proposes auteur 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 theory of itselflf. and among the things this book reminds us t of is that the uniy

we speak of in e pluribus unum is not a once and done accomplishment. but a concert achievement that needs to be renewed. it is pretty common for conservatives to suggest that we have forgotten some of the genius of our constitution. but at this point almost countercultural the right, no less than of the left to suggest the genius of our constitution has not yet been exhausted. that's a bold proposal of this book. i hope you will join me and giving yuval a warm round 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.

in one way or another there will be a report. it's great to be here. what an amazing group of friends is up 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. this is a book about the constitution. and so it's a book about law, politics, policy permits political culture and institutionalgs design and all e things we love to do here at ai or just in my little corner of ai. but more than that, speaking with all of you in particular about the book and doing it here: say a little more personally than i normally might. i bit about how i came to write thisdo book. i want to do that into unique

ways pulled out a couple and then what i'm really here for. to begin with on one kind of personal note for me this book is a natural extension of work i've been doing for a decade or more about the roots and character of political division in america. i read a book in 2012 about the left/right divide. 2016 what you might call the up/down divide. the ways and with the fracturing, fragmentation of american life is open to chasm between elite the broader public. 2020 about their break out of her institution and our trust in them. they say that i notice all these problems got worse over that time so i should probably stop writing the book. but the path of these books for me and it's been a path from diagnosis to prescription. fromhi thinking about how things

have come apart to thinking at least some of how they might be brought back together. this new book for me as a natural next step on that path. what it would mean to be more unified society now. release our political life which is only part of our life together. it also draws on an argument that was central to the second of the books i mention. a book called the fractured republican 2016. the target in part we have moved in our public life in america from a long period that began the middle of the 20th century something like liberalization was a moving force of our politics. cultural liberalization for the left, economic for the right. in which the two parties wanted to both claim the term of freedomfor themselves. into a new phase where people feel they lack not b a liberatin but a sense of belonging.

what we hunger for, what a successful political movement would have to offer now is not just freedom but solidarity. left and right in our time are both groping for ways of presenting their priorities in terms of solidarity. is going very poorly so far. look like nationalism, identity politics are both ways of trying toef advance right or left ideas under the banner of solidarity. we are going to need to do better than them. a lot of our institutions and practices and priorities in the comingto years are going to have to find ways to articulate a case for themselves in part in terms ofin solidarity. this is also true of the constitution. we are used for case or for freedom and individual rights that case isbu true but we've lt sight of the case for solidarity forming a more perfect unit which after all is the first kind of case it makes for itself. i think we need to reacquaint ourselves with that case that's part of what this book tries to

do it is a case for the constitution in terms of solidarity. butic for me the case of the american system in terms of holding us together runs deeper than that to. that's a second personal path of this book that i was having. i am an immigrant to the united states. was born in israel. my family moved here when i was eight so i mostly grubby or as a naturalized citizen i became an american at the age of 19. in 1996. big naturalization ceremony but lots of people from lots of places and at the endit of it te retired federal judge as i remember him he was ancient but i was 19 so maybe he was 48. [laughter] he got up to speak. i thought he was going to talk about lincoln and the founders. he did not do anything like that pretty give a very short talk and set from today on you have to think about america and the

first person plural. that was a phrase he used. i'm quite sure i was not the only new citizen there who did not know what that meant too. i was very glad it was not on the english test we just took. but he explained that. we and us when we talk about america. not them and they. that's it. i remember it being disappointed with what hepp said. here i am more than a quarter-century later telling about it. it wasn't profound is exactly what we needed to hear what we still need to hear not just we immigrants but we americans. we have to work at finding ways to understand our country. not in terms of day of the terrible people who will ruin everything if they win the next election. but in terms of we. all of us who in some ways share a future in common as americans. that's on the case for being nice. that's not a case for a truce or civility. you make a truce with enemies but citizens are not enemies.

our options are not war or truce. we are meant to argue with each because werecisely do share future in common. we are arguing about that future and what ought to be. the stakes are high exactly because we are a we. we is a very important word in the american tradition. the first word of that amazing second sentence of the decoration of independence we hold these truths to be self-evident. the first word of the constitution. we the people of the united states for that is not a coincidence. both of those documents are expressed in the first person plural there both examples of people taking ownership of the common fate of the nation. the declaration expresses a common commitment to a set of ideals that then underlines decision taken in common. the constitution builds on the premise. embraces the principles but it does something in practical terms may be more complicated. establishes a political

framework for eight society that generally agrees about the fundamental principles but does not agree about much else produced not agree aboutut exacy what those principles mean as a practical matter and many situations it disagrees about a lot all the time for the constitution is exactly about how to make that a reality has a practical matter in the face of division. and in a sense that is what this book is about how the constitution can function as a framework for unity and cohesion in a divided time. we are obviously short of unity and cohesion now in america. the notion might seem strange at first. americans are very divided and polarized. among other things we are frese with her system of government. constantly deal people disagree with us. too many americans are persuader constitution is not suited to our contemporary circumstance.

that it is a relic of a past age or is undemocratic. it makes it too difficult to adapt to changing times. in this divided era i can only make our problems worse. it's much more like the solution. it was intended precisely due to address the problem we have the challenge of how a divided society can hang together and govern itself is designed with exceptionally sophisticated grasp of the nature of political division and diversity. it aims to create common ground in our society there in part to unify us. by first helping see what the constitution actuallytu is and what its characteristic kinds of modes of operation look like. how it shapes the public. work into the purposes and the historyns of its various institutions. federalism and congress the

extraconstitutional of the party system. it considers all those in light of the constitution prioritizing of national unity. finally in the last chapter what unity actually means in light of all of that. not going to march youou through all that were here for a conversation but instead let me offer you five quick propositions that emerge from concerning the constitution in this particular particular light but propositions some of the pillars of the argument of the book all of which are now contested urges unfamiliar. the first proposition is the nature of unity itself in a free and diverse society. it emerges from what seems to be a contradiction in the thinking of james mattis particular. madison is among the framers thought most abouton division infection unity. at the central purpose it was

not alone in that. forming in a more perfect union is the first stated purpose of the constitution. the third or so in the federalist papers are all about thean need for union. and yet, mass and also thanks unanimity, but we would think of as agreement is impossible in a free society. on any subject of real significance. he says it very bluntly and says quote as long as a reason of man continues fallible and is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. unity is not only possible but essential free society is going to be the scene of intense disagreement. so then what is unity mean and that kind of circumstance? is the first proposition want to put to you. the constitution is rooted in the promise and a free and therefore diverse society unity does not mean thinking alike. unity means acting together.

thinking and acting are different. a line together are different but unity means acting together. distinctct and notion of unity s essential to understand our constitution. it is an idea that invites the question to which the constitution is ultimately an answer. acting, together have come back together and we don't think a life? all of its modes of action to answer that question. a lot of what is mysterious and frustrating to many american now set out but our system is a function being an answer to that question. being designed to enable people who do not fully agreed to agreo nonetheless act together. hown does it do that? again and again at various institutional forms. especially in some of those we

find most frustrating the constitution offers a way of compelling constitution and negotiation of forcing differing factions into common action brought into engagement with each other. into bargaining and dealmaking for common action is not only cordial it's contentious, it's confrontational. it requires dealing with people we disagree with which can be slow and unpleasant. it's directed to finding a mutually acceptable accommodations exactly by recognizingt that we do disagree yet do belong together. it's not simply a matter of counting heads. some contemporary critics of the constitution argue factional division simple majority votes. they dismiss our bizarre complicated the constitution is a lot more sophisticated than his critics are. much more sensitive than they

are to the dangers of social division accepts theha premise only majority rule can legitimate public action. it also embodies the countervailing insight which is unavailable to anyone familiar with history of democracy. in the history of the united states that majorities can sometime act oppressively too. itar recognizes narrow majoritis in particular are often ephemeral artifact of the election system that created them. they don't tell something real about society. it demands a popular consensus multiple durable reasonably broad majority that present themselves in institutions that are elected by different constituencies in different ways. that went to the second proposition i put to you. in our system of meaningful policy victory requires broad coalitions. not narrow majorities. if you look at our politics for five minutes today you would see is not obvious atin all.

everybody seems to have forgotten building coalitions through negotiation and competition is now taken to be a betrayal. a betrayal of a party, of failure politicians promised to fight for their voters as they should prove too many politicians and voters have forgotten what it means to fight in our system. what it means to bargain effectively. advance your priorities. behave as if finding is refusing to negotiate. in fact that's what losing confusing looks like. we would in the system is a seat at the negotiating table to refuse this seat is to refuse. it is to lose. the fact we have forgotten that is a big why the practice of constitutionalism is out of whack. a big part of why our politics

feel broken and divided. they problem is vertically evident in congress first and foremost institution of our system. exactly because as the primary venue for bargaining and accommodation of the federal level. congresses were the fundamental work of acting together when we don't think alike is supposed to happen. that's why it's particularly disturbing to find in congress the attitude that negotiates. that attitude has seeped into a lot of how we now think about fixing congress too. there's a lot of agreement something is wrong with congress. it's not hard topl find people thatof think that. there is a bipartisan community of congressional performers. phil wallick and kevin and i are often the token conservatives at a lot of these conversations. but beneath what seems like agreement at the beginning of those conversations, agreement that congress is dysfunctional. there is actually very profound disagreement but function is

failing to perform. what is congress.doing? most people would answer it's not passing the legislation they think is essential. it is not acting on entitlement, climate change or whatever you take to be the crucial challenge of the moment. that is a common view but it is a mistaken view of the constitution. it seems she knew it congresses failing to do is not so much advance my policy agenda, but enable cross partisan. what's failing to do is enable us to act together when we don't think alike. the difference overdiagnosis actually has some enormous implications for prescribing remedies. people frustrated with congress' failure to move legislation rather than advance some idea of cohesion. hence a call l for things like a limiting supermajorityrm requirements like the senate filibuster are further empowering the leaders in both houses. something like parliamentary government as a a model of whatt

is we are missing. that kind of model is not ultimately to lead to durable legislation. i more important underlying the capacity of our politics to engage in common work toward reconcilable goals. reforms should point in the opposite direction for things like empowering committees and interparty factions. not the leadership. reinforcing the supermajority requirements are the only reason there is any cross partisan work at all. that's a third proposition i givecr you reforms of congress should not cross partisan bargaining more likely rather than make it less necessary which is how they often work now. that kind of approach of the problems of the institution of government, as he was the purpose of the institution? what is it that is now failing to do could inform how we think about the modern presidency? we are almost as confused about the presidency as about congress.

our understanding is dominated by prioritization of policy action over the prioritization of order and social cohesion. we think about the presidency now very legislative terms we think it's a representative institution its purpose is to advance the policy t agenda of e party that when the last election. the presidency's unitary office it cannot be represented a diverse society of 30 millionio people it is an administrative office. certainly the present has intended to have a role in driving the agenda of our politics and putting questions on the table. settinge priorities. the kind of bargaining and accommodation that is supposed to move policy could not really happen within the office of the president. that means the president can't advance unity by a sort of policyen action. the distinct role the president has in advancing national cohesion along with this other important rolls in s the system. his particular role in advancing unity has to do not so much with

advocacy buticy with alexander hamilton called steady administration. contemporary presidents because their ability to drive policy action essentially claim to do the work of the legislators when legislators won't do it. they have grammatically under underemphasized steady administration. every president starts his term with undoing everything his predecessor did then spends the rest of us are doing everything his successor will undo less in a place the kind of steadiness that's necessary to the work if the executive is no part of the job. the effect of not is not just bedford frustration. but also for national cohesion. it grammatically raises the stakes of our elections and the temperature of our politics because it means key question do not get resolved by bargaining and coalition building. but sharper turns, hard stops. everything depends on who the presidentt is. and so my first propositions to

the fourth implication look at the constitution through the lens of national unity reforms of the executive should prioritize steady administration. not assertiveak policy making. finally, when it comes to the third branch of the courts i don't think an agenda of reform is exactly the way to. think about what is needed per the courts obviously have a crucial part to play in advancing unity. it might not quite be the part we imagine for it is not rooted in their ability to resolve disputes. of course resolve disputes but that's what they do they are intended to resolve disputes over with the law is, not what it should be. they are not the right venue for mediating among competing o visions of the public good in america. our great public disputes need to be a result of the work of the legislature above all. the most viable service the courts provide to the cause of national unity is in their policing of the rules and boundaries of constitutionalism. they are restricting of the power of majorities and public officials. to pursue various end runs

around the structure of our system. courts have been improving on this front. unlike the elective branches they are closer now for the constitutional purpose than they were a generation ago they do need more a focus on constitutional structure rather than policing of personal rights. but the transformation of the court in this century has been an extraordinary thing to see. when it comes to the courts the final proposition i would offer you is the function of that transformation. the lesson of conservative success in the court is we should beno fighting for the constitution not against it. conservatives and constitutionalists have every reason to give up on the judiciary and the second half of the 20th century. but rather than get out of up on it they set about renewing its commitment too its proper purpoe through a project that began his intellectual work much of it done here at ai and involved into institutional work. the federal society and

elsewhere supported by political action that enables a genuine transformation of the judiciary. d think about the constitutional challenges that we face now. we are, with regard to congress in particular, roughly where the right was with regard to the courts in the mid 1970s, the idea that we could reform congress to do its job seems hopelessly naive right now, but it is not more naive than the notion that antonin scalia and robert bork and lauren silverman had when they were scholars 50 years ago, that we could have originalist judges dominating the judiciary. strategic naivete is actually crucial to successful reform work. you have to be a little bit naive about what you love the most. you're not a cold eyed realist about your spouse or your friends, and you should be just a little naive about our country, too, and about its prospects. not so naive as to be optimistic. don't do that, but just naive enough to be hopeful.

and so to fight for our constitution and not against it. there are a lot of people now, including some on the right, who are ready to give up on the constitution or to dismiss it as inadequate to a society that is as divided as ours. but i think they are exactly wrong. the constitution was intended exactly to address the problem we have now. the challenge of governing ourselves despite deep divisions. and in a way that might heal those divisions just a little, might bring us a little closer together and help us understand ourselves better as one society engaged in common work despite a diversity of beliefs and desires and interests that is not going away helping the constitution do that requires understanding how it was meant to do that and transforming that understanding into an agenda for reform and for action. that's what i've tried to offer in this book. it's also what a lot of you do every day. and so thank you for that. and thank you for being here.

all right. thank you for that talk. we are going to have a whole conversation here and then we're going to open it up for questions from you and from our remote audience, which i believe is going to be submitting questions under the hashtag a i american covenant. so get your questions ready. i want to start by talking about they and them. yeah. instead of we and us. and that is talking about sort of comparative constitutionalism, the there's, there's so much praise for our constitution in this book that it raises the question for me, are other constitutions as just inferior or the or is ours just better suited for us? yeah, it's a great question. i think that there's there's a little bit of both. the united states, you know, our system in a sense is so effective that it allows us to

compare ourselves with democracies that have much simpler problems than we do. so you find political scientists saying, you know, the belgian system is more representative norwegian system is more democratic. the fact is the united states is not like belgium or norway. the united states is like brazil and mexico and india. it is a mass vast, insanely huge and diverse democracy. and yet it works about as well as the european systems. and that is because our system is so well suited to our situation. i do think it's distinctly well suited to our situation. i'm not suggesting that the belgians should adopt our system. i don't know. they seem to be doing fine, but i do think that we should not adopt their system because their system is not nearly as well adapted to dealing with the complexity of a mass vast democracy like this. the core difference is that the

parliamentary systems really do empower narrow majorities. if you have a majority coalition, you get all the power until you lose the coalition. so the mandate means the government is yours. the united states does not work that way. it does not empower narrow majorities. it tells those narrow majorities you have to grow if you want to do anything that endures, that that is very frustrating to narrow majorities every recent president has found himself in some meeting thinking, why the hell am i talking to these people? i just won the election and the constitution answers well. so today the system just works that way. and unless you have a very large majority and i think the democrats learned in the obama years that even having a full ambassador proof majority does not actually exempt you from this challenge. you don't just get to do whatever you want majority power is the source of legitimacy. it is also the source of very great trouble and danger. and our system is especially

alert to that. second problem. and so i think that it is particularly well suited to our situation as a result of that. you know, i'd recommend it to others, too. i think it's i think it takes account of human nature and of some of the challenges of political life in ways that are probably objectively superior to the parliamentary systems. but it's not superior in every way. it is in some ways less representative and my advice to friends abroad is a little bit like edmund burke's advice to the french make the most of your tradition and let us do the same for god sake. so you dealt a glancing blow at people on the right who you suggest consider our constitution to be inadequate today. but i wonder if it isn't truer to say that they think that is it is sort of lost beyond hope of recovery, that it's a great constitution.

but we now have i mean, you yourself in your book document all the ways in which we have a kind of wilsonian spirit inhabiting the shell of a madisonian system. and and they don't think of themselves, i think, as anti-constitutional. so much as post constitutional. so why are they wrong? why should they not give up hope on the constitution? is a dead letter? well, i'd say a few things. i think, first of all, any time conservatives find ourselves saying that we're post something, we should we should just stop. we don't. i don't think that that the fundamental political questions are different from one time to another. i really don't. i think the basic durable questions, how do we create a world worthy of our children are always the questions we have to ask. and that the answers to those 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.

secondly, i think that there every american generation would have had the temptation to say, well, yes, but now in our time, things are really bad. these people are really awful and they've really broken things and if the generation that lived in the 1860s didn't see that, and the generation that lived in the 1960s didn't say that, i don't think we have a very good excuse as the generation living in the 2020s to say that that kind of a view that this is so broken that we don't have to try anymore is a form of escapism. it's an excuse for not trying anymore. the work is hard and the work of preservation and conservation in a in a forward looking country like this of preserving our capacity to renew ourselves and therefore to make progress, is hard work. and it would be very hard work now to do what what i'm suggesting and what we do here at a but the fact that it's hard is not an excuse for not doing it and there is no excuse for

not doing it because the alternative to sustaining the system is not that we get to win and we just don't have to deal with those other people anymore. if you look around the country, i don't think that's what really would happen and i would say the same thing to people on the left. if you eliminate the protections for minority rights in our system, you will discover that progressive law professors and traditionalist catholics are not a majority. you may love them, but they are not a majority, and they will not control the future. they will find themselves in very grave trouble as we all would, so that doesn't mean they're wrong. i think some of them are very wrong, but it doesn't mean that it just means that all of us should understand ourselves as belong sometimes to minorities, and sometimes to majorities. and therefore we should. a system that empowers majorities in a way that is also protective of minorities. i think we have such a system and i think it's worth fighting for, even though it's very hard.

the book, i would say, is deep conservative, but not insistently. so it operates on conservative premises about human nature, which are the same really as those of the founders. it quotes the federalist papers more than most non-conservative books that i think you come across more references to burke than to rawls in it. but if you are the sort of conservative who who is interested in policy victories in a smaller government. yes. and a smaller federal government in particular. what's in this vision for you? well, i think that if we understand the system in the way that i've described it here, and then that i describe it in the book, we do end up with a system in which the role for the national government is smaller and more constrained and more focused. it's not this is not a libertarian book and it's not 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 when the basic form of our government, the basic character of our politics, is the table in a way that should worry us. and that means that we have to be making the argument for the basics and remind people why their inheritance, not a burning pile of garbage, but an extraordinary prize. the fact that we get to live in this country, that we did not create and that we get to make the most of the kinds of freedoms and possibilities and institutions that we have is something we should begin by being grateful for. and i do think that part of what is required us in doing this responsibly is thinking about the role of government in a responsible way. but that's what i would do within a working system that's what i would do in a congress that is functioning. i think in a funny way, the kinds of debates that we think

of traditionally as policy debates, debates about how to reform medicare or how to or how to think about the defense budget. those debates are not happening in the right way at this point. they're not happening the right way because our political culture is broken and we have to think about why that is to and maybe first before we can even get to a place where we're having a constructive about how to restrain the size of government or think about the role of government. so i think traditional policy debates matter enormously. i know where i stand in those, but this is a book about infrastructure. it's a book about how to get to the place where we're even having that debate in a way that could turn out well. i suggest this is a book about infrastructure should not be a big part of your. fair enough but you know better than the one of the suggestions that you make in the book is for an expansion of the house.

yes. and i wanted you to briefly sketch your case for how that would improve things. but then also explain why you think an existing house member or an existing house majority might actually be interested in doing such a thing. this is a this is a counterintuitive idea, and in some respects, i think most of us, when we look at the house, we don't really think i wish there were more of these people, but it is first of all, i, i think of it as a form of constitutional maintenance. the house was intended to grow after every census so that it remains somewhat connected to the growth of the population. it also did grow after every sentence, after every census, until the until the 1920 census and it would make sense for it to continue to grow by the formula that was used in the 19th century. i think that would allow our national legislature to work better. but i also think that it's a way into a set of other reforms of

congress in a way, you know, when you talk to members about changing the rules of the house and senate, it's especially true in the house that they all will. they're right with you. while describing the problems. they all think there are big problems and none of them are happy with their lifestyle. as members of congress. but it doesn't really occur to them that things could change. it's very hard for them to imagine that there could be changes in the committee system or the or the budget process. i think a kind of infusion of new members in the house would create a moment where a lot of other change is possible too. and if we're ready for that moment, i think we are with other ideas for how the congress could be improved to better do its constitutional work, creating moment could be useful. and so since it's it's a way of bringing congress into line with the intention of the framers and a way of of helping it be better representative and a way of creating an opportunity for those other kinds of reforms. i think it's a it's a plausible

way for now. look how does it appeal to the average member to say your importance should be diluted by adding 150 more members, which is what i would do, 150 and then growing much more slowly after that every ten years. i think the 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 more than 800,000 people at the at the time of the ratification of the constitution in the first house, every member represented about 30,000 people. we can't get to that level, but we can do a little better. and i think members do see the logic of that. and i would say in general, members are open to this idea. the leaders are not leaders of both parties are very skeptical that a lot of people too with. yeah. that more members would make the place work better and i think that's a good sign to. that i mentioned that you have a

lot of quotations in some ways the book is a kind of commentary on the federalist papers, but it's not uncritical. and it's it it struck me that the two federalist papers that are most familiar to us, number and number 51, are ones that actually come in for the most criticism in your book and it's one of them you might want to talk a little bit about that. that's really interesting. yeah. i mean, you know, those are the our colleagues in white coats. those are the big city federalists and the flyover country federalists get ignored. and this book really tries to think some about the flyover country federalists that have a lot to say to us about some of the questions that we're talking about here. this is very much a madisonian book. it is in the spirit of james madison more than anybody else. his voice certainly is heard more than anyone else's voice in the book. and i think madison stands out in our political tradition for worrying about division. there are voices that worry

about social order and dynamism. like hamilton. there are voices that worry something like social justice s and equality like jefferson. those voices are there in our political tradition. they are at their best. the right and the left. madison worries about social cohesion and unity in a way that almost nobody else does. lincoln does. and you can see why. but madison does it without without a civil war. it's what he worries about, above all, when he thinks about politics. in the era of the framing of the constitution. and so the book a lot from him. but i think there is a way that at at certain times madison is dismissive of the need for civic virtue. he thinks that the system can work as a kind of machine that resolves the problems of bad citizenship by the operation of the institutions. madison isn't always like that, and you can almost see him kind of correcting himself when he

goes too far in these directions. but i think that both throws ten throws 51 examples of is going too far in these directions is he's dismissive of republicanism and dismissive of a certain kind and he basically says the system is a sub attitude for the absence of virtue. now the best counterarguments to this in the federalist are also from madison, and the book emphasizes those because i think those counterarguments are correct. it is absolute utterly essential that the citizens in our society have a certain idea of their responsibilities and that there be a kind of of responsibility, of virtue. the word responsibility actually is very madisonian word. it used to be the case that the oxford english dictionary said that, that madison's notes in the constitution was the first place responsibility was ever used in english. and then they found an earlier example, which i'm very upset with them for, and i want an earlier that was a really useful thing to be able to say.

apparently it was wasn't true, but the word was not in general use and it was really both madison and hamilton use it in the federalist. and i think it describes the role of the american citizen as someone who takes ownership of the society they live in. it's a very republican concept, and i think it is absolutely essential for citizenship in our kind of republic. so you know, the madison who says that is preferable to the madison who doesn't. the i want to maybe push back a little bit on your thoughts about. the courts, policing, the structure of our government. and i wonder if there's there's a lack of some of the institutional realism that you praise when it comes to the founders in that. do we really think that the courts can play this intensive role in keeping congress and the presidency in their place, which

historically, you know, they didn't really do it wasn't, you know, as you know, it wasn't it wasn't the court that kept the congress from delegating its powers. it was a certain kind of institutional self respect. yes. i mean, congress didn't want to part of the problem we have is this peculiar fact that the problem we're trying to solve really when it comes to congress, is that the institution doesn't want the power that it has, which is not a problem, that the framers really thought about. it is is not it did not occur to them that congress just wouldn't want to have the power to set the direction of our of our national politics, of our government. i think the role of the courts is very distinct. the courts are reactive. i this way and i put it this way in the book, congress frames legal frameworks for the future. it is a forward looking institution. the president operates in the present and lives in the present tense. always. and congress looks back and

reviews actions. the courts look back, i'm sorry, the courts look back and review actions in the past. and so the role of the courts is constrained by that fact to begin with. they have to respond to complaints. they don't act of their own accord. generally speaking, and they can only review past actions. but they do have an essential role in reviewing past actions, in making sure that the structure of the system, the integra ity of the system, is maintained. some of the role they have is in restraining the public right, as in restraining majorities from doing things you're not supposed to do there. all kinds of things that constitute takes out of the reach of majorities. but some of the roles in restraining the other branches and i do think that the situation created by the willful under action of the congress does two things at the same time. it invites overreaction by the executive, which the courts need to restrain, and in itself

creates a problem that the courts need to address now addressing under actions very hard. and we're finding this now in the current term. and when the court looks at at chevron deference and thinks about how to and thinks about how to handle a kind of delegation of authority to regula or story agencies, it --fi regulatory agencies, it needs to find a way to compel congress to do its own job and, ultimately, to write laws that are clearer and more distinct and precise than congress tends to do. it's not simply if possible for the court to tell congress to do that. it does not have a mechanism for solving the problem that way. but i to think that by shifting the balance of delegations, by putting more of the power to interpret the law in its own hands where it belongs, that is what judges do, it can create some pressure on congress to do

its job. i don't think it's a perfect solution to this. the courtse are not going to te solve this problem. congress has to want the the power to legislate. and that's going to require changes in the incentives that members of congress face more than action by the court. >> which brings us to the topic of politicalal parties. a very common critique of our founding design is that the founders didn't want to have parties, and parties sprung up almost immediately -- >> yeah. >> -- on the creation of the constitution. but youin argue in the book that the development of the modern party system under particularly martin van buren ended up actually helping the constitutional design. >> absolutely. my great hero, martin van buren. [laughter] i think, i do love martin van buren. and don't get he started -- you did get me started a little bit, so i'll tell you a little bit about him. martin van buren is a

politician's politician. he ran for everything, and he won a everything. he never lost an election. he was a mayor, county commissioner, he was a state legislator, he was the state attorney general of new york, he was the governor of new york. he was a member of the house and senate, he was vice president and president. >> just one term though. >> fair enough. [laughter] >> he knew a lot about electoral politics. and the extraordinary thingng about van buren is that he saw the party system collapsing in front of him. there was a kind of pseudo-party system in the

strange thing, requires an absolute majority of electors for someone to be elected president. if no one gets a majority, then congress, the house decides who will be president. that means that if there are more than two candidates that reelection is basically going to go to the house almost every

time. and this happened in 1800. it happened again in 1824 in a particularly bad way where the party system was totally vitiated 1824 election. there were four major candidates. they were all democrats and the difference between them were just personality differences that became a kind of policy differences and so martin van buren is a senator at this point. the election goes to the house among the many odd things about that election were that 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 the gallery of the house, watching the house choose the president. and martin van buren, you describe as this in his memoirs was was sitting there thinking this should not be happening in congress. this should be happening inside of a political party. these people are just deciding who should be the leader of our party. and he proceeds to offer a set of ideas for how the parties can

become the mechanism for selecting can become the mechanism for selecting candidates for office. party conventions, local party offices, all kinds of processes for nomination and selection that could help the american system work better as a two-party system. two broad, permeable, messy, incoherent party coalitions that on paper make no sense whatsoever and thatat allow the system to be a system where people bargain and negotiate and build coalitions. big, broad parties train people the build coalitions. and then those people are ready to to build can bigses in congress. it's a -- coalitions in congress. it's a missing piece of the constitution and has worked very well for us for most of american history. and in a lot of ways, was the brain child of martin van buren. the challenge we face 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 system. and for the same reason, because it's just about coalition building. it's not about clear, decisive policy actions. and woodrow wilson and others over the -- from the end of the 19th century through the 20th century, came to the view that the party system needed to be much more responsive and accountable to policy agendas. and so in a sense, our parties should bee much more ideologica. and through various mechanisms, have made our party system more ideological but also much more polarized and much less of a perfect fit for the constitutional system. our parties as institutions of candidate selection are now very, very weak. partisanship is strong when parties are weak. and i think that's a lesson, a kind of ironic lesson that we have learned over and over for the last 50 years. and it's time to rethink the way our parties choose candidates. i think it would be good to

rethink in b a martin van buren direction. i don't think we can really do that. conventions and back rooms and ways of choosing candidates that don't involve voters, no no politician's going to get up before primary voters and say, you know, you people are the problem, you need to let us choose the candidate for this office because you're choosing witches and stuff. i think -- >>ry a whole ad campaign tryingo refute that. >> yeah, well, didn't pursue it. [laughter] i do think we need to find ways of moving forward so that the question we're asking is not

over. we have, in fact, here the the longest enduring and most successful democratic republic in the world. there's a there's a tendency, i think, for us as americans to think of our country, as a young

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's absolutely amazing. and that's what stands out about us. well, you know, americans still sort of think and you see this in some of the catastrophizing that we were talking about before. we always have a sense that this thing is just about to fall apart, that it's an experiment, it's not really working. you know, you listen to the founding generation. they certainly thought so. abraham lincoln, the 1830s, he had good reason for thinking so, and he did thi good reason for thinking so. every generation of americans, our national anthem is a song about barely surviving the night. still other country like this. and so we do really tend to think that we are on the verge of collapse. but we are not on the verge of collapse. we have a lot to work with here. the secret to doing that well to

begin from what we have and see what we can help to work better. i do not think in terms of starting over. i do not pretend i could do better that a system that evolved 230 years and a complicated world in choosing the president or framing the two houses of congress. weo were starting over we would do it differently. i'm not sure wee would do it better and we are not starting over. incremental reforms and where there really arems problems. not always seeing where the problems are. some ways this book isn't exercise in fencing but you get chester's and said he had couple ways of saying this by the one i like best is an analogy if you inherit a piece of property there's a fence on the property and you think it's useless and want to take it down. make sure you understand why it was put up. you might still want to take it down. if youhys do not understand wht

was put up you are probably making a mistake. somebody did the work of putting this there it's essential to see why that is and what it was a solution chair. it's important for us to approach her institutions of government this wayem. we may need to change them it's crucial we understand why they are the way they are before we do that. and that is with the book tries to do. >> okay i'm going to open it up. anybody has a question please raise your hand. i will call on you and then a microphone will come your way. there's a a microphone right by you so you can go first. >> thank you so much for that yuval for that so fantastic. one of the most functional aspects of our system is you've touched on the book is the relationship of state and federal powers. and,ur it seems as if an attempt to restore will require an