[ applause ] >> thanks. and i'm happy to answer any questions if anybody has any individual questions they'd like to ask. i appreciate everything. and thank you, chuck. next, a discussion on congress, political parties and polarization from the time of america's founding through the civil war and into the 21st

century. this online event was hosted by the national constitution center which provided the video. >> and now it is a great honor to introduce our guests. what an amazing panel. america's most distinguished historians and scholars of congress to help us understand our current -- edward ayers is tucker boat right professor of the humanities at the university of richmond. he is the author of many books on the civil war and reconstruction including and i will just highlight one of his many award winning books, "the thin light of freedom: the civil war and emancipation in the heart of america" which he discussed of the national constitution center in 2017. his forthcoming book is southern journey, the migrations of the american south, 1790 to 2020. edward ayers, welcome. it is an honor to have you. >> my pleasure.

thank you. >> and joanne freeman class of 1954 professor of american history and of american studies at yale university. where she specializes in the politics and political culture of the revolutionary and early national periods. she's co-host with ed ayers of the very popular american history podcast back story and it's great to unite these co-podcasters together. and is the author of many books as well including and most relevant for our discussion tonight the path breaking "affairs of honor: national politics in the new republics" as well as "field of block: shy lens in congress and the road to the civil war." joanne, it is such an honor to have you with us. >> thanks for having me. >> norman ornstein resident scholar at the american enterprise institute where he studies politics, elections and the u.s. congress. his books include "one nation after trump: a guide for the perplexed, the disillusioned,

depressed and not yet departed." i love norman's book titles the next one we did at the constitution center and it guessed us even before we began the program "it's even worse than it looks: how the american constitutional system collided with the new politics of extremism" and we relevant for tonight as well "the broken branch: how congress is failing america and how could get it back on track." he is a friend of the center and appears frequently on our programs. norm, wonderful to have you back. >> always a pleasure, jeff. >> let us jump right into the history of the violence that consumed the nation in general and congress in particular in the years leading up to the civil war. joanne, we'll begin with you because your book "field of blood" describes it so vividly, the statistics that you talk about are so striking between 1830 and 1860 you write there were more than 70 violent incidents between congress and

the house and senate chambers or on nearby streets and dueling grounds and you note it wasn't confined to congress. between july and october 1835 alone, there were 109 riots nationwide. so much more -- well, let me ask it this way, is it true that there was more violence then in congress in particular but also in the nation in general than there is now? why was it and give our audience a sense of how violent congress was. >> sure. well, to answer your question first, this is going to be an obvious thing to say, but congress is a representative institution. so it does very much reflect the ethos of the time and the fact of the matter is the first half of the 19th century and i'm sure ed will tell us the second half of the 19th century were very, very violent. so some of the violence that you're seeing in congress is really representative of that moment, but what i was interested in and what really drew my attention was the amount of it and the dynamic of it.

and, you know, you were discussing the years leading up to the civil war and it's worth noting the violence or at least the extreme violence really begins in the 1830s. it's not a constant wave, it sort of comes and goes, but it's the 1830s and '40s and '50s that see these incidents. what's interesting and what's totally logical is if you track who is fighting who, initially you see one party fighting another and then over time you see north versus south and slavery is at the center of the fighting. now, what struck me as interesting most of all and what really shows violence as a tool in the antebellum congress is southerners knew that to a certain degree they had an advantage because they were willing to dual and more willing to engage in hand to hand combat with then some of the northerners. and they used that advantage on the floor. they used it as a tool of

debate. and they would deliberately intimidate and threaten northern congressmen and some of them would silence themselves or sit down or not stand up rather than risk either that threat or being humiliated in front of the public by being threatened and then having to back down before it. so violence was -- it's shocking all by itself but what's particularly interesting is it was a deliberate tool of debate. over time what happens is by the 1850s, the mid 1850s, some northerners decided that it can be their tool, too. >> that's such a powerful turn in the book when you describe how the decision of northerners to challenge southerners to duals actually decrease the violence and you quote from that remarkably moving letter which you said moved you to tears when

representatives wade, chandler and cameron all pledged to challenge future dualers to fight, you write when it became known that some southern -- northern senators were ready to fight fors were willing to duel when the abuse went on, and then we finally have this new exhibit on the civil war from thaddeus cain and when i tell the story of running for senate, i tell the story of how my left hook is better than yours, and i am tougher, so you bring that to life so incredibly powerfully. norm ornstein, and it is often said or at least said by norm mccarthy who is a scholar at princeton who says that we are more polarized today than at any time in the civil war.

can you tell us what it is about the political parties right before the civil war that led us to be so polarized then? >> so, you know, going back through history and we will see echos of so many of the divisions that are familiar to people today. if you look at the period leading up to the civil war and looking at the party system that was in flux. we had a whig party that became that was transformed into the modern party, and we had along the way a know nothing party and the ire and the focus was on catholics and on some elements of the northern europeans in part, and we had actually a president-elect on know nothing ticket, and ultimately it became the two parties that we know today or at least that we know today the democrats and the republicans, and of course, we had that overarching issue of

race and slavery and the parties flirted with that. for a while the democratic party had a pretty strong pro anti-slavery meaning, and others in the party, copperheads who did it in a different way, and it shook it down in a republican defeat to abraham lincoln and the party who became the force to defeat slavery and we will talk about the things and how it changed in the aftermath of slavery and the reconstruction period, and all of those things that were life and death issues to so many really created a level of polarization in the society, and it broke down obviously along the regional lines, and those regional divisions continued to persist, but not necessarily in the same way as the parties change, and the democratic party which became a more dominant party

many decades later had a merger of southerner and northerner democrats, but the polarization of the society and the parties and nolan mccarthy is right that what we are seeing now is something far more distinct than what we have seen since any period in 100 years. >> that is fascinating and you are teaching that the party system in the civil war period mirrored the polarization period in society and nicely reinforces joanna's point in congress mirrors the violence in society. >> yes. >> ed, your book, the thin line of freedom argues powerfully at every step that freedom found themselves at challenge and sometimes defeated as history shows black freedom advanced

further than their champions dreamed possible precisely because the opponents of freedom proved that with each of the powers of support of the northerners as norman told us of the post civil war period to reconstruction and the system polarized to where reconstruction was ultimately abandoned. >> yes, so as norm was saying the polarization inside of the north between the democrats and the republicans in the north, it was a fundamental fact that people often tend to forget. the democrats lost because they only had 47% of the vote, and as we have seen in our time, the electorate doesn't just go away when they lose. so in 1864, 10,000 votes in

different districts and see if that number sounds familiar, would have given the election to the democrats in 1864 after the suffering of the civil war, and had some gone differently, abraham lincoln might not have been elected. and the northern democrats were as racist as the white southerners and they hated everything that the republicans were doing. so the war ends and the white south says, well, okay, we have lost. but, in the meantime, the election, andrew johnson becomes president, and he seems to cut some slack for the white south, and they have great, okay, let's push for everything that we can get. and let's put the black coats in there to institute as much slavery as possible, and before republicans come back into congress, and right now, there is white presidents running everything. this sounds familiar, too, and

so we will do everything that we can after the riots in new orleans and memphis and widespread violence against black people in the south, and the republicans say, we cannot have lost 350,000 men for this. we must restore the purpose of the war. and because the white south is just running roughshod. so the white south keeps pushing and pushing. and northern republicans say, okay, it is going to take an amendment to the constitution that you have to support, and you are going to have to allow black men to vote and be delegates to rewrite the constitutions before you can come back in, because you have shown us that you are not, you are not sorry at all. you admit that you were defeated, but you don't admit that you were wrong and you have congressional commissions to

admit that you were wrong and what you are looking for is rebelism, and the spirit that even though you are lost, they are still the rebels, and so the patterns that we still see plays out today are there, and i am not giving up my heritage, and holding on to this identity, and so as a result, you would not have had the 14th amendments if the republicans had not felt that if they did not revise the fundamental law of the land, and the democrats up north are going to join with these white southerners and take away what was lost in the civil war. so that is what i mean by the 15th amendment because to really make sure, and we have really made it that you can't take away the vote. so reconstruction begins ending as soon as it begins. in virginia, it is over by 1870, and there are textbooks with the numbers 1870 in our head, but reconstruction really ends in 1871, 1872, and so the south

brings along the fundamental law recognizing that if you were a native born american and you have fundamental laws of the southern white recalcitrants. so when it comes to an end, the united states settles into a pattern that is going to settle for a long time, and very closely contested settlements, and especially after this turn of the century, and those are the most closely contested and most finely calibrated contested elections in history, and that is when most people think it is boring, but a few votes here or there could change the outcome. it is a fundamental restruck shuns, but the commonality from what we are saying is that polarization finds a way to happen no matter the situation.

winner-take-all, few parties, the us/them and it was shifting, but there a polarizing impulse in american political culture. >> so interesting. thank you for all of that, and what an important point that it was the fear of losing the gains of the civil war that led the supporters of the 14th amendment to want to embody the constitution, and we told the story of the exhibition that we might have the party forever, and they said, no, we might lose it, and that is the warning of so many of the parties that it might go away which is so prescient and sobering for today. now, joanne, we have a bunch of questions from our friends. to you, howard green says that when the northerners are willing to step back and stop bullying,

and we also have a question about whether any members of congress will try to reach across the aisle at this time and a question about whether in the pre-war era if it was slavery and unspoken catalyst, and respond to any of those that strike you as provocative? >> oh, sure. well, the first question about the northerners and the southerners and i would say that the southerners don't stop fighting, but they are just sort of thrown off of their feet, because the northerners who have been caving in, and certainly northerners who are fighting back, and the word bully that is asked in the question is right on target, because that is the word that people used at the time for the people who were provoking the fights, and bully brooks, and preston brooks who

attacks charles sumner, and that is his nickname and a word applied to the people throughout this period, and so there was a sense that these people before the second half of the 1850s that the southerners were picking on people who could not be bullied because they could not fight back in the same way and what then happens is that these northerns come, and the northern congressmen, they were campaigning on the idea that they were going to fight the slave power, and there a reality to that in congress that they meant it, and some of them came with weapons, and literally made it clear, and the document that you mentioned that i will confess did make me kind of teary, that these three northerners did agree to why they will duel from now on, and the part that captured me is that attend after describing this with all of the emotion, they said that we are putting this down on paper so future generations will understand how hard it was to fight slavery on the floor of congress.

so, they make it clear precisely how i am describing in the book, so it is bullying, and i suppose, and this is sort of a, you know, simple answer, but if you stand up to the bully, sometimes that is a useful thing to do, and i will mention briefly the aisle question if there were not people reaching across the aisle, there were, and after a certain amount of time, that became hard to do, and you can see the mere hint at a certain point in the 1850s that someone would reach across the aisle is sometimes met by mockery or even though joke, and the joke is, yeah, you do that, and i think that there is one congressman who says to another, you do that and you better tell your kids to put their sunday best on, because they will never see you again. so there were some people trying, and strikingly to me in the handful of years before the civil war, people were reaching across the aisle off of the

floor, and they could not do it on the floor in the public eye with the press watching, so they removed themselves from congress and tried to do it in a separate space, but in the end, those were not issues that could be compromised. >> that reminder that compromise is only possible sometimes in private in the constitutional convention in secret and that you could forge those compromises and tweeted in real time when the press is watching in the civil war and that is comparable only in name. and norm, everybody wants to talk about the present, and friends we will, but we have to learn the history as well, and so that is why i am not jumping right into the questions. so many will ask, why isn't congress standing up to the president today. bill asks, why does congress not

receive requests to repeal president trump with fines or imprisonment -- and ralph hendrickson, how can congress resume the oversight of the executive branch, and sarah cunningham, our first guest asks why is congress and the senate willing to bow to this executive any kind of bipartisanship, and so now answering those questions in a bipartisanship, it seems that congress was willing to stand up to the president, and they passed the civil rights act of 1866 over the republican president johnson's veto, and indeed impeached him because of the distaste for his policies. so compare congress' willingness to stand up to the president then and now and why. >> i will digress a little bit,

jeff, because i want to bring in some history, too. there is a wonderful book called "the first congress" by jefferson. and so there were a number of mediocre people, but they all saw that they needed to establish this as an institution that meant something that had respect and they did some remarkable things including the bill of rights of course, because they had institutional loyalty in the sense that if the constitution was going to work, they needed to get it going, but to step back a little back. the constitution was set up through those compromises to give an inordinate amount of power to the south. they knew it. it was not just the way they set up apportionment, and the so-called compromise and the nature of the house of

representatives gave him clout, and because of this determination to maintain slavery and in aftermath reconstruction to make sure that they could recapture their power through voter suppression and the use of race, and i would remind people of one other thing or something that most people don't realize, the house started with 65 members, and it was capped in 1929 at 435. it actually didn't change in size after the 1910 census, and that is because the southerners saw that if they kept responding to the population by adding members, it was going to dilute their power or give the power to african-americans who were emerging, and so they figured it out how to keep the size at 435 and keep the size at redistricting and

reapportionment, and so there is so many things to keep in mind, but it was the southern democrats that kept the power from the 1930s all of the way through a long period of time, 40 consecutive years of power for the democrats where they could build a compromised coalition with the northern democrats that maintain voter suppression and their role in the south while giving democrats power. and in the aftermath of that as the south change and the regions began to change, it was the republicans who moved in, and took over from southern democrats and began to court voters in a way that was focused around race and suppressing the power of race.

so i want to get all of that on the table. now, what i want to say about the questions directly is that we have moved from polarization to tribalism, and that began, i would say much more with newt gingrich and his arrival in congress in 1978. and it is a change in the party and much more occult in the political party and ended much more in a recognition of the president who would not behave in a fashion that the entire country was put first and who might look out for his own economic interest or the family's economic interest or subordinate the interest of the country's interest sometimes for economic interests.

the electoral congress was formed because it was not beholden to the president, and the members would have what political scientists have called institutional patriotism would form those interests, and so if you have a party that has the corrupt president or the cult, then you will lose that fundamental check, and if another one of the checks, the independent judiciary is cast to the side with a desire to fill it with people who also will have loyalties that don't match what we believe should be an independent judiciary, you will lose many of those checks and balance, and we have lost a large number of them now, and the right role of the senate for example to use the power of confirmation of judges and of executive officials of congress

pu some boundaries around the to presidency or bad behavior by members of the executive branch. when those begin to shred, you lose control over the system, and i believe frankly, that is what we have had in the last several years, and it is not something that the framers would have viewed in a positive light. >> very interesting and some powerful statements when you say that i have leaned and to say that you need to define between polarization, and tribalism, and i have heard norm say that it is people not willing to buck their party and tribalism, and i have heard norm say that it is people not willing to buck their party even when it meant within

the same party. >> and jeff, if you view the other party as worthy people all trying to solve the same problems with misguided problems you can agree with the problems and then work through are the compromises and the political process to where you can achieve some accomplishments along the way. if you begin to believe that the other party is an evil way of life, then preventing them from party and keeping them down is becoming a goal, and then you would swallow things that are unacceptable to you, and that is where we are now, and this is the fundamental difference. >> that is amazing. i have to ask whether you take from norm's comment that people were actually less willing to recognize members of the opposite party of people of good faith today than they were at the time of the civil war which is an amazing statement, and

then tell our friends who are watching about the really powerful website that you have helped to establish electing the house of representatives where you seek to recapture the role of congress as an equal branch of governing studying side by side with the presidency and granular data about the landslide wins of the president to produce victories where you need the congressional and senatorial victories to produce sweeping legislative reforms. >> sometimes political science is better than historians to look over long political periods, because we are good at that, but if you pull back the cameras, you can see the patterns. norm said that the democrats maintained control of the house. from 1954 through 1994. think about all of the things that were happening in america

in those years, and yet, the apparent, the stability of partisanship. that is something to think about. we don't want to glorify that, because in many ways that control as norm said was based on the solid south, and its own kind of tribalism. so when you have just white men disagreeing with other white men, they, if they are not dueling each other, they can feel a kind of a solidarity. part of what we are seeing now encompasses more americans, which is obviously the way things should be, but if you are thinking of the stability of the house of representatives decade, after decade, after decade, that is in many ways kind of a deal in which the white south would get what it wanted being left alone with segregation for as

long as possible, and at the same time, it would with fdr and so you would have elaborate deals in which different constituencies were served. so i agree with what norm was saying that all of the norms that have fallen apart, so to speak, in recent times, but the fact is that we don't want to forget that all of american politics have fallen apart on other than disenfranchisement. so the map that is being formed is to show you that the districts have voted from 1840 to present and you can see which once flip. i come from a very strange one in there, and i come from the only congressional district in the south that has voted republican since the civil war

and so when people are looking at this later and not now, but in the corner of tennessee and there is only one red arrow where i went to andrew johnson elementary school there, and we had the identity of being this republican district. so from my lifetime of being republican in the 1950s in the south and what being republican today are entirely different things that is another thing that this map helps to understand that the labels, and you will see the people attacking democrats who want to support the confederate monuments, and all of those guys were democrats back in the day, and they are being hypocrites, and being a democrat in the 1850s and being a democrat today means are entirely different things, but being able to see the broad shifts and the great shifts in stability of voting, and i don't know if there is a confidence of of the

stabilization will show us that the great transition of the south from democrat to republican, the system has with newt gingrich coming in there is a kind of the disequilibrium feeding through social origins. >> fascinating. we will talk about some of the causes, and donna conast has posted the site, and no surfing now, because we have class, but it is particularly illuminating to dig into site here. and joanna one important thing that you raised in the civil war era, and now relevant today to polarization is technology, and some of the tributes are to the current polarization to the world where it is argued in a

book about the role of media, and so can you talk about the polarization of the media in the civil war period and what can we learn from it? >> sure. the moment that i find myself thinking about very often these days is the telegraph, the rise of the telegraph as a form of technology. before the telegraph, there was a certain form of wiggle roo th you were sorry that you said or did, you could rush over to the newspaper office or the reporter, and change what you said and there was wiggle room to keep things away from the public eye, because there was a limited number of reporters in washington, but the telegraph fundamentally changed everything. it takes away the wiggle room, and there is 45 minutes and

everybody knows about everything. so there is reporters from all over the nation who can travel that far distance and stay there, and telegraph back home what they are seeing. so congress, and congressmen lose control of the spin. so if you think about congress ideally speaking supposed to be an ongoing conversation between the public and the representatives in one way or another, and the public says what it wants, and they respond in some ways and they get readjusted, technology changes the conversation, and there are moments think that right now, we are in the pseudo technology age, and when nobody understands the quite absolute give and take, and somebody is trying to master manipulate it, and take advantage of it, and every now and again, you can tell that no one expected that to happen, and so if the telegraph had some

wiggle room, and somebody said goofy at a private dinner and somebody had their phone and tapes it and tweets it and the whole world hears it, it is a generation of politicos and generations who lose the conversation to a certain degree, and now they are doing it at hyperspeed. so we are at the moment where the conversation has changed fundamentally at a type when it is highly polarized and everybody is othering everybody else. i am an american, and i represent american and as norm puts it, you others are evil and cannot be dealt with. that is a dangerous time in this period of hyperspeed, and it is made worse by the time that we have a president who is a tweeting president. so if you think back to the couple of years ago, people trying to figure out what that meant, and if something is on a tweet, how do you take it,

formal or not formal? it is mind boggling and we take it for granted the degree to which technology can fundamentally scramble the workings of democracy, and so that is some of what we with are feeling our way through right now. >> technology can scramble the workings of democracy is a good way to put it. we are feeling that in a dramatic way. norm, how did we obviate some of the ways around, and we saw social pressures from the frag -- fraying party system, and evolve to the nevertheless post war period and some of the lessons of the preconstruction jeffersonian model help us to get out of the current model of

this system? >> joanne talked about the telegraph transformed the world and people thought that it would be wonderful, and we could communicate face-to-face, and wars would end, and lots things would change for the better, and what we see now is that things can change for the better and they can change for the worse, and you can enhance tribalism and division through that medium. i would say that, you know, when we had parties that were broader tense which we had in the period from the 1930s on and some degree there as well, but when you had in the republican party, we used to call them when i first got to washington in 1969, we called the southern democrats

boll weevils for that insect that infects cotton in the south, and we had modern republicans from the new england or the northwest from oregon or washington gypsy moths that infects the soil after the hard frost. and so our parties did polarize ideologically and it did create a problem. so we did not have the era of the populous surges from the 1980s and early 1990s where the media and new media and c-span for example would exacerbate some of the divisions, but we had leaders who understood the larger obligations here. one of the things that i would say as we began to talk about

and beginning to talk about race as dividing issue, we would not have had those dramatic civil rights bills in 1957, 1964, 1965 without republicans, northern republicans being decisive factors. it was evan dirkson in the senate and others from ohio in the house who were able to overcome those things, but as you see the changes to further polarize us, it was there, and exacerbate change. talk radio and cable news found that they could gain power and advancement by adding to the tribalism and business models that worked that have had us careen out of control. and without major changes in the

media, and that is going to be very hard to bring about. without this sense of a jolt, and what i believe has happened now is that you have a republican party that i think is going to have to go through at least three elections in a row with losses and not just in 2020, but in 2022 again, to give fraction back to quite conservative people, and problem solving oriented and not willing to use some of the decisive things like race and immigration like they have been used in the past to begin to right the ship, and move us back in a direction, but it is not going to be coming easily, and it is not going to be coming quickly, i am afraid, and we have to brace ourselves for what is going to be an extended period of challenges to try to solve the challenges, economic and racial and otherwise. >> thank you for that sobering thought. >> have a nice night.

>> exactly. come up with another book title, and we will take a xanax. >> and it is -- >> i am sure it will be. and so, ed, we are in part of the solutions part of the friends in the audience are asking as char does, big of a crisis is this to go forward to fix the electoral college, gerrymandering the vote and voter suppression, and so, ed says there is a total change for solution, because it is a great shout out to teaching abilities, and fred says that fred was my favorite professor, and so i will have to answer the question

over to norm. >> well, thank you for the nice plug. i feel it is important to think about what is happening right now outside of the political system that is going to have profound effects on the political system. we have been referring including myself to southerners as if they were white. black southerners have moved american politics and its most progressive ways all of the time from reconstruction. there is no 14th amendment if african-american people are not making it clear they are willing to risk they lives to vote. unless the testimony from the south on these telegraphs is that these people held in slavery for almost 200 years cannot wait to get into schools and to learn to read and write, and reconstruction is not just republicans in the north, but it is black people in the south to put their lives on the line to show what they would do with american people.

and then you take the people with the least power in american society, poor african-american southerners after 100 years of disenfranchise and segregation, and they lead the great moral revolution of the united states in the civil rights movement, and the voting rights act that followed that is not going to happen if they are not in the streets, and today, black lives matter is also showing, look, you have gridlock. you are all tied up in worrying about each other's tweets, and meantime, we are dying, and things are going to have to change. so a more optimistic through line through these stories is that the people who have been the most victimized by the american system is the most articulate for the american ideals and fighting for them, and it is hard to know, and who would have thought and thinking about all of the history and the constant surprise, and who would have thought two to three years

ago that most americans would have supported weeks' long protests against the police. and it is the way it is done and the voice using, and 40 years of studying history, nobody has any idea what is going to happen. it is one surprise after another. so, here, we have gone through, you know, terrible period of dismay, and we may be seeing the sprouts of a new era coming up. so, that is before the nice words from my friend, and that is what i was going to say is that we don't want to forget that along with every effort to disempower people, they have taken it upon themselves to find power in whatever way they k and

-- they can, and right now it is, and right now it is whatever symbols they can find. and can you remind me the question from one of my favorite students? >> and the question is to norm, why doesn't congress stand up for itself, and you have given some good reasons for it. >> when voters know that they have their backs, they will. so what you are seeing is that people are developing more courage when they know they are speaking for the majority of people who want justice. i think that you are going to see a new progressive era that is going to be becoming very soon and it is going to be sustained for a long time by young people for whom the events of the last decade have been the formative political periods of their lives and with the cycles, some of the things that we have been worrying about may have a chance to heal themselves, we will see. >> thank you for all of that.

>> joanne had her hand up. >> may i set it up, because there are so many questions, and i know that you want to respond. we can't predict history, and we can as you have so powerfully, and you can contextualize and i have to ask you, things seem so less violent than they were in the times of the civil war and to put it mildly by and large peaceful and not seeing people beat each other up in congress, and why is it that they are less violent and then i will put it on the table this big theme that susan coleman raises, and you produce the drive to transparency and the culmination of transparency to provide deal making, and is there a ideal of too much transparency and might the first amendment prohibit any regulation of technologies to

allow the kind of moderation and compromise that madison expected? >> okay. i will start with the -- >> there is a lot there. >> there is a lot there, and maybe you can remind me, but the beginning one, i know it is less violent now, and why less violent now. and part of that in a sense is a very clear answer, and that is the united states in 2020 is not the united states in 1855, when elections routinely had people shot at polling places. so there was a level of routine violence that was very different, so in part, we are in a different moment. we are seeing more threatening and violent behavior than we are expecting to see, and this is what people are responding to.

some of it is encouraged and that is why it is there, but in some ways we are less violent, but, yeah, we are also seeing a lot of extreme language and behavior that is going beyond where we would be comfortable with under normal circumstances. as far as transparency goes, you know, that is the eternal problem is that transparency seemingly on the surface of it is good. and we can all see what is happening, and then as you suggested, and just as my book discusses, when things happen in front of the public eye that complicates them enormously. so how do you balance the need to in essence work behind the scenes to maneuver things, and then bring it forward to present it in a way that the public is still responsible, and i don't have a simple answer for that, and i just think it is one of the fundamental questions of balance in politics generally,

but particularly in congress which is so bound up with public opinion. you asked the second question in there, i think, which is now forgotten and do you remember it, and if not, i want to go back to what said before because i wanted to say what norm and ed said. >> this is the closing rounds and so your closing thoughts for our friends as well. >> okay. so, norm was talking about run for your lives, and that we are at this moment where many bad things have happened and might happen, and it is going to take a lot of time and work, and ed was talking about the possible grooming moments of extreme intense change and unstable

behavior as ed said, we have no idea what is going to happen, and we don't know if it is all going to go down and circling the drain, and we don't know if it is all going to be okay, and i don't know if we can assume yet either one, but what that means is that unstable as things feel now, there is room for change, and what matters now is what we do with this moment, and how we respond to what is going on now, how we realize the fact that what is happening now, things are changing, and we don't know what is going to happen, but there is room for growth in addition to collapse. i suppose the way that i join them together is to encourage people to realize that it is vitally important how people think about this moment, and the importance and let their thoughts be known. some what we are seeing now is a great sign of that, and it is important for people to realize they can help bring change, and that things are not absolutely

over with. >> that is a wonderfully important note, all is change, and that is said in "metamorphosis." and thank you for bringing it together so powerfully well. norm, your closing thoughts i will not presume to shape them. what would you like our friends to leave from this discussion? >> well, a couple of things, jeff. one is that we can do some things structurally, and difficult as they may be. i was just a part of an american academy of arts and sciences commission on the common good. and we have had a whole list of things we could do and that included enlarging the house of representatives and altering the electoral college to have a

mandatory polls to improve the institutions as they have in australia, but i agree with ed that we have so many positive things happening now, and including a wider awakening among many white americans that been ignored for so long that minneapolis and so many others have set out, that black lives matter is a meaningful phrase and not something to push to the side and ignore, and the immigration have brought us back to a larger and better society, but the institutions that are built by the framers are more distorted as the time passes, and it is nothing to do with donald trump. by 2040, 70% of americans will live in 15 of our 50 states. 50% of americans in eight states which means that the electoral

college is going to have more instances if we keep it where the winner of the popular vote loses the presidency, and 30% of americans who do not reflect the diversity and the electoral dynamism of the country will not represent the country, and so the electoral patterns in the way in which way do elections and that part of the court who does not distort gerrymandering, and so what voters want will not be reflected there and the courts will take us further, and further away from the popular will from those elections, so we have work to do to prevent a real crisis and legitimacy of the system that goes beyond the issues that we have talked about and even transcend some of the deeper divisions among ethnic and regional lines. >> thank you very much for that and for sobering us in such a

powerful way. ed, the last word is to you. >> the american civil war and emancipation remind us that things far worse than we can imagine can happen, and things far better than we can imagine can happen. the end of slavery in the modern world coming to an end is something that people could not plan for. the other thing that i would say as i read this wonderful report that the american academies put out the final part of that after all of these very impressive structural changes is the civil culture of the country. it is what you're doing right now. it matters what we are thinking and saying and talking to each other, and we have to keep that alive, too. whatever the election cycle brings us, we have to keep the civic culture of democracy alike. that is what i think. >> thank you so much for that, and it is a reminder of it does

matter what we think and say, and the fact that you taking an hour in the middle of your busy evenings, and hundreds of you to come and ask questions and hanging on the every word in the chat box is a reminder that when we come together to learn with reason, you can indeed appeal to the better angels of the nature and grow together in widz dom that is what the constitution center is going to continue to do to bring you brilliant minds likes ones that you have just heard and so grateful to the ones that you have heard bringing historical and constitutional light, joanne, norm, ed, on behalf of the constitutional center, thank you so much for the discussion, and friends, thank you for joining, and see you on the 30th for the constitution and policing. thank you so much for a wonderful night. >> thank you. middle and high school

students, your opinion matters so let your voices be heard with c-span student cam competition. be part of the national conversation by creating a documentary that answers the question, how does the federal government impact your life. the five to six minute video explores the program that affects you with the c-span competition that has $100,000 in total cash prizes and you have a shot of the grand prize of $5,000 and entries for the competition will be received wednesday, september 8th, and for the competition rules, tips and more information on how to get started. visit our website at student cam.org. next, a historian with the u.s. capitol historical society discusses the tumultuous relationship between jefferson and the