speeches, made 72 motions, and served on four committees at the constitutional convention in philadelphia. in the preface of his new biography of our fourth president, most importantly, madison authored the virginia plan, a bold call for a total redesign of the national government that set the agenda for the convention and established the foundation upon which the constitution would be built. at the time, james madison was 30 sixers old. madison was america's first politician. >> on this episode up of notes plus, of knows plots is available on c-span now or wherever you get your podcasts. host: our conversation now with tony woodlief. he is the author k "i, citizen: a blueprint for reclaiming american self-governance" ." he is executive vice president at the state policy network.

before we get to the book, explain what the mission is and how you go about doing your work. guest: we are an organization that supports over 65 state-based think tanks across the country and they work on a variety of economic policies and our goal is to restore authority to states and communities so people can govern themselves more effectively. host: how do you do that? how do you work with those states and do you do much work with the federal government? guest: we do not do much work with the federal government. often we are on the other side suggesting that they stick to what they in solution only required to do -- constitutionally required to do. i'm in some cases, we help people who want to get a -- in some cases, we help people who want to get a think tank started. we show them how to raise money. in other cases, we are doing strategic guidance and

consulting with groups and providing all kinds of training and development as we go and mostly helping them connect with each other because often an issue in one state is an issue in another state. during the pandemic we had this desperate need for healthcare workers, we worked with a lot of groups to help change laws or modify laws so that people who are licensed healthcare workers from other states could provide healthcare in the state they are living in at the time which is ordinarily not allowed. host: reclaiming american self-governance, an issue you argue in your book and an issue for americans in every state. the book is "i citizen," if you want to take a look at it. when did america lose it and where and how did we lose it? guest: that is a good question.

i hit at that a bit in the book. i look at how the founders intended for us to govern ourselves and our communities. over time, what has happened is that we have seen the power that was intended for states and communities re-situated into washington, dc and it settled in the hands of people who were largely not elected. our legislature, the congress does less and less work. agencies do more and more work and interpret the laws as they see fit and the people who are left out our we the people. we do not get a vote on all kinds of things that the founders intended for us to decide for ourselves. host: you argue in the book that

we are more united than divided. for viewers who see poll after poll about political polarization, how can that be the case? guest: the first part of the book, i was really troubled by a narrative i hear from pundits on the left and the right, which is that we are bitterly divided nation. half of us democrats, half republicans. we hate each other. when you get into the polling data, which is widely available, anyone can look at it, reputable polling data, most americans are not that invested in politics. there are certainly not that invested in a political party. they are not that ideology goal. they tend to be center-right. people who are bitterly valid -- bitterly divided our people i call -- are people i called the political flacks.

those kinds of people are the ones that are utterly divided. but they tell us that we are the problem but they are the problem and more often than not, their advocates for taking authority from communities and putting it in d.c. so people like ourselves can decide how we live our lives. host: this might be one of my favorite paragraphs talking about the political class you are just referring to. this is what you write. "i'm going to say some unpleasant things about the political class, politicians, flunkies, spokesmen, and various hangers on. just because i believe the political class behaves apprehensively as a whole, that does not mean i think every single person is reprehensible. there are some fine people in public service caught in a system they want to change just as much as we want to see a change, but there is also a flock of espers.

i trust you will know deep down which of the two you are and i invite you to take as much offensive you deserve -- offense as you deserve." how much of the work is involved with people in the political class? guest: often, we are working with people at the state level. we have interacted with folks at the federal level trying to get them to change laws and regulations that impinge on state and community authority. more often than not, we are working with people of the state level. if you look at state legislatures, they are just as polarized as congress in terms of democrats, liberal republicans, very conservative or whatever passes for conservative for the republican party, but they get along much better than congress does. they are able to pass budgets. they have much more bipartisan legislation than congress is able to produce. in general, you find at the state level state legislators

tend to be much more responsive to their communities than congress as a whole. i think you see that reflected in polls where americans have trust in congress and d.c. but they have a reasonable amount of trust in state legislators. host: tony woodlief is our guest. the book, "i, citizen: a blueprint for reclaiming american self-governance" ." phone lines are open for viewers to join the conversation. (202) 748-8000 if you are democrat. (202) 748-8001 if you are republican. one of the first time you read the constitution? guest: i read the constitution locked in my room by my mother.

i can never understand her politics. what happened was my dog got loose when i was about nine years old. i saw my dog across the field and i saw a dogcatcher parking his truck and it became a race between me and the dogcatcher to see who would get to my dog first and i won. i am holding onto my dog and he pulls out this clipboard and starts asking me questions about where i live, what my name is, what my parents names are and my mother comes dashing across the field and she just let him have it and called him an agent of the state and he has no right to question anyone without a parent present. she just laid into him. i felt bad for him. she scared him off. i never saw him again. she is my hero. she is walking a back to the house and i thought i would get ice cream. instead, she starts yelling at me and she whips out a

constitution out of the silverware drawer. what kind of woman keeps a constitution in the silverware drawer? my mother. she said, go to your room and did not come out until you have read the whole thing. you should never just cooperate with the government just because they tell you. that was my first reading of the constitution. i did not quite understand it, but i have been interested ever since. host: in cooperating with the government, how has that translator your view on that in a time of covid, of vaccine mandates, showing vaccination cards to get into restaurants and gyms, a trend that is increasing in cities around the country. what is your feeling on those public health mandates? guest: at a broader level, i have learned an anti-authoritarianism from my mother. i came to believe that authority is a good thing when it is earned, when it comes from

competence and good intentions. the reality is most americans when you ask them do you believe your government intends well to argue, has your best interest at heart, most do not believe that and i think was good reason. -- with good reason. we are desperate for people who have the competence to help us navigate things like covid and recession and wars and rumors of wars. we are desperate for people who are competent and well-meaning and the truth is that time and again our public officials, especially at the federal level, have failed us in that regard. they look at us like we are the ones with the problem. the truth is we are happy to trust people who show competence, who can be relied on to tell the truth and not manipulate and i think too often we have gotten the opposite from public officials and we are fed up. host: plenty of callers for you. we will start with jb out of

arkansas. good morning. caller: good morning. it is interesting that this man would be on right after this discussion we just had about the vaccine and who wants to take it and who does not. his point of view, is anti-authoritarianism, is that correct? guest: i believe in authority when it is earned and well-intentioned. caller: i often thought that trying to run america would be like trying to herd cattle. contrast that with china, a communist country. they have one government. everybody is a communist. they have one race of people. they are all chinese. over here, we have mixed races and groups.

look at china today. that is where this covid started. but you never hear anything about china having it anymore. all you hear is they have defeated covid over there and i maintain the reason is they do what they are told to do. if they don't do it, they will wind up in mongolia. host: would you prefer that system? caller: no, i would not prefer it. i am contrasting that with america. the reason we cannot beat this stuff over here is because everybody is going in a different direction. but over there, they are one group, they are told what to do and they do it. guest: the first thing i think of is alexander spoke to me some years ago, he wrote that he wished people in the west would distinguish between the russian people who are under the sum of their government and the soviet

government and i think that applies to china. i'm trying to think in terms of the brutal oppressive chinese communist party that rules that country. that is multiethnic. and the people who have to comply where they are brutalized. in terms of the chinese government as having a lot of problems, i think you have your finger on something. it is incredibly hard to govern a diverse country. one of the strengths that the founders imparted to us if we would just take advantage of it is federalism, the ability for communities to make decisions for themselves and when we look at the record, especially when the team members cool, we look at the record on covid, we will see incredible failures at these centralized federal institutions like the cdc, the fda, inability to produce a test in time, bottlenecks, lawsuits against private providers tried to come up with their own versions of testing and therapies. our previous caller mentioned

trying to force everyone into one kind of approach to dealing with covid versus an open approach with therapeutics and everything else. i think that we see when we centralize these kinds of solutions, we get worse outcomes than when we allow for problem-solving. host: gary also in the tar heel state on the one for republicans. go ahead. caller: actually it is gray. i am one third of the way through mr. woodlief 's book and he had me on the reaction to a french opinion piece in the atlantic. anytime we can go against the twitter class, i think we are doing great things for political discourse in this country. i think that the echo chamber that the district has become is kind of scary. you can look back sometimes and envision how this thing like the

hunger games started because the way the world's view inside the beltway compared to the way it is viewed in the rest of the nation, the way mr. woodlief described, it is dark and we need to be more like the hinterlands and less like d.c. host: the want to talk about the reference to the interview that the caller referred to? guest: that is a great name. a very north carolinian name. i talk a bit about, the average french -- david french and as recline, they each wrote a book on polarization. they have a very grim view of regular americans. they both seem to believe that we are on the verge of civil war and the problem resides with us. what i have seen in the data is the problem is not regular americans. they are not on the verge of civil war.

they are not going to pick up their guns and start shooting each other. what bothers me about both of their books, they are both incredibly smart and gentle, nice people. but it did not seem to strike either of them that their roles as pundits, as advocates within the two major parties might have helped stoke some of the polarization that we do see among the roughly 1/5 of americans who are hardcore partisans on the left and the right. instead, they seem to think that the problem is inherent and americans themselves, whether it is some kind of deep-seated anger or racism or whatever it may be. i think that the political class , the pundits, and people who lead us would benefit from some reflection on their role in this country has become and maybe do a better job of leading us out of this place by first fostering some tolerance and generosity of

spirit toward the other side. host: florida, this is cheryl on the line for democrats. good morning. caller: good morning. this is cheryl. i am from florida. i am not embarrassed about my name. i had the moderna shot, one shot in three weeks later, i got the infection around my heart. am i on the air? host: you probably turned down your tv because it is easier to talk through the phone. what is your question for tony woodlief as we talk about the topics from his book? caller: my question is i had one moderna shot. i ended up with -- i have a masters degree. i had one shot of moderna. three weeks later, i am in the hospital with an infection. they found the virus in the enzyme. i had a mild heart attack. they had to put two stents in my

heart. my kidneys are failing. i now have cancer back. what is this question -- i cannot get a second shot and i am to take those pills because i do not know the contradictions. where am i now? host: cheryl, tony woodlief worked at the state policy center. not a medical doctor. mr. woodlief, is there anything you want to address? guest: first of all, i am sorry that you are going through this. i cannot imagine how difficult that is. we dealt with cancer in my household this past year and covid takes it far worse -- makes it far worse. with all of the isolation, you feel alone. the only thing we have to fall back on is what is in our communities, friendships, families, churches, other kinds of groups we might be part of.

that is where our help will lie. one of the things i'm am encouraging people to think about in my book is how can we rebuild these local communities and relationships, turn off rtd's, not this program of course, but turn off our tv's and start relating to our neighbors because that is how we are going to start figuring out how to deal with the tragic letter inherent in our lives. -- the tragedies that are inherent in our lives. host: when it first came to the house and senate, was that a good thing? guest: i can tell you have read the book. i am of two minds. on the one hand, i believe you shine a light and you see what is going on so i do like that aspect of what c-span has done. what i talk about in the book and i recommended the c-span archives to everyone because it is fascinating. you can see contentious debates.

it is so much fun. what i point out in the book is that when we begin to televise the proceedings of congress, we promoted a certain kind of behavior. we begin to reward a certain kind of behavior and republicans and democrats began to take advantage of that. you begin to give an advantage to what we call the show horses over the workhorses. now we have reached a place, a lot of other changes in how we do politics, where the show horses can go out and raise money, and they do not need c-span so much to do this. they can raise their money from high dollar and low dollar idea logs on the left and the right and those of the people they feel compelled to represent, the extremes versus the mass in the center that is not that interested in that ugliness that we see more and more of in congress.

i would not blame c-span. it would be more appropriate to blame all of the other kinds of changes in how we do politics that facilitated the show horse but you can see the beginnings of the show horse and in one of the very first televised speech is that you can read about in the book. host: you can watch on c-span archives, al gore with that speech on the floor of the house. the debate around cameras in the supreme court, what are your feelings on live coverage, life cameras -- live cameras? would that be a good thing? guest: i think it would be a terrible idea. i cannot remember which justice said just recently. he or she pointed out that they can go to the grocery store and most people will not recognize them and that is probably for the best kind that they have some semblance of a normal and quiet life.

when you read about the supreme court, you see the efforts from people who are appointed by democrats and republicans to maintain a commenty with one another, to get along and try to protect the constitution. once you put cameras in their, you create -- once you put cameras in there, you create temptation that you don't want to create. host: we should note some the c-span archives, tony woodlief's appearances, his first dating back to 2010 when he was talking about interpreting the u.s. constitution, talking about the bill of rights and the constitution. that you can watch or you can give him a call this morning as he appears about 11 years later here this morning on mr. hammond ." -- here this morning on "washington journal." caller: i have two statements.

the united states with your philosophy, we would still have slave states. a patriot puts the united states, not the state of texas, not the state of florida. if you can remember, texas at one point during the obama administration wanted to secede the union. what you are saying is impossible to credit. guest: first of all, referring back to my point about china, i think you have to differentiate between whoever has the majority in texas. i do not they get anytime a majority of texans have wanted to secede. i suspect the people who talk about it or not that serious about it either. there is plenty of room for federalism without going back to the horrible practice of slavery . one of the things we modified the constitution that we put in the 14th amendment and the 13th of may meant -- the 13th

amendment was a way to extend the rights of the founders intended for all human beings so that they applied to all human beings and there is still work to be done there. when you concentrate power in the hands of people in a distant city who are mostly unaccountable to the electorate, that is when you are going to see continued abuse of regular people of all races and creeds. what i am advocating is a democratic approach where we put authority back into states and communities and let we the people make decisions while respecting individual rights, of course. but allow communities to make decisions in a democratic fashion. one of the things i talk about in my book is a law passed by congress. federal agencies past 27 regulations with the full force of law and these are unelected people and that is not how this country is supposed to be governed. host: roy on twitter. "is there any country in this

world that has become so enamored with libertarianism that they have abandoned the idea of it takes a village to raise a child? his rugged individualism the right approach." guest: two separate and fascinating questions and i hope i do not bumble them both. i am not familiar with any libertarian country that has thrown away the ideas of community and common good and those sorts of things. we have different ways of talking about them, of course. you are talking to somebody, like i said at the beginning, i am raised by a libertarian and anarchist. i consider myself a conservative. i am an independent. i do not think you can get away from community. even my most libertarian friends still need community. where they differ is how much authority people should have over them. of course, the tension is to be

in community is to bind yourself to other people and to create obligations for yourself. and most people choose to do that because the benefits of humidity are tremendous -- the benefits of community are tremendous. the more authority we can place in communities, the more choice we have. if you don't want to live in san francisco with the kinds of regulations and rules that san franciscans would like you can move to austin, charlotte, greensboro, north carolina and be among people who want to govern themselves the way you would like and we have that opportunity under federalism. but you do not have that once you've got a one-size-fits-all rules, from unelected people in the imperial city of washington, dc. host: tony's question maybe think of this passage. "political identity is a distant priority behind identifiers like parent, child, sibling,

parishioner, neighborhood, even bass fishermen. too many of our citizens are political class and make political identity all-encompassing." what is the blueprint to fix that? guest: what i tried to get at is -- and we can talk about it here , there is a minority of americans for home their political identity is extremely important by their own report. my fear is that that is growing, that number is growing. once you get to a critical mass with those kinds of people on the left and the right, we are in trouble because there is an intolerance. they are more concerned with beating the other side than doing what is right. how do we resist that temptation when media rewards it, money rewards it. the most contentious kinds of people succeed in american politics today, how do we resist that?

what i argue in the last part of the book is we have to reach out to our neighbors. the very first thing i say is love your neighbor and i talk about what that means because love is not just a feeling. it is what you do. truly, love your neighbor. get to know your neighbors. and extend that into your communities and into your towns and cities and figure out how to begin to solve problems together because then you are thinking in those other identities, neighbor, friend, townsmen, we are getting past the idea of democrat and republican and thinking about citizenship, which is what we are supposed to do and the ironic thing is i believe when we begin to gather together and have arguments about how our communities should be governed, that is when we begin to bond more closely. when we are locked in disagreement, we begin to bond more closely as fellow citizens versus shouting at each other

across the divide and letting the partisans in d.c. decide everything for us. host: the book "i citizen." this is ann out of arizona. good morning. caller: i'm not sure if you are affiliated with the american legislative exchange council, the agency that is writing the legislation in the states whereby the state legislatures have decided that they might overrule the will of the people. despite the results of an election, they might send their own slate of electors and ignore the will of the people. what is your position on that? i understand what you are saying about we should all be citizens,

but it is very difficult to be living in an environment where some people are fed the kool-aid of fox news news on a daily basis and they are living in an alternate reality where 5g networks are going to infect as and the socialists are going to rain down communism on our country. what is your position? according to the constitution, there is no real popular vote for the president of the united states. do you support that and do you think state legislators should be able to ignore an election and appoint their own electors? i have a little bit of experience with our legislature in this area. guest: i did not want to speak authoritatively on what is going on in arizona because i do not know. i can tell you that some of the research that i have done and some of my colleagues have done into election laws at the state level more broadly, we see

widespread support among americans for both doing what we can to create maximum access to the ballot. that means extending hours that the polls are open, allowing for mail-in ballots, those kinds of things. a large majority of americans favor that to her and they also favor things like voter id to confirm that it is one person and it is being properly counted. it should not surprise us. they want some of what the democrats are arguing for and some of what the republicans are arguing for. what we see from the parties on the other hand is talking about elections, but really it feels to most of us like what they are doing is trying to find a little edge over one another because for them, the most important thing is not represented the people, it is winning -- not representing the people. it is winning. when you look at how the founders set up elections, and

they did not set it up so that you have a popular vote for president. all through the constitution, what they are trying to do is empower people and communities to govern themselves, to not have a king, but we the people, but at the same time put in roadblocks so that at the passion of the moment and we are at our natural prejudices, we have roadblocks to slow us down and to guarantee that we have the broadest possible majorities deciding things. that is some of the reason you have this indirect election, state legislators deciding senators. the thought was if you put state authorities in charge of some of these things, they would better represent the interests of the full state in those decisions and if you have a popular vote, winner take all approach to every single office. host: this is gary out of east brunswick, new jersey. good morning. caller: good morning.

thank you kindly. i appreciate what you are doing, but let me state something. i live in jersey which has something in common with north carolina. what does it have in common? both governance one of the democrats, one of the republicans in north carolina. they do not represent my values. the state has a right to do what they want to do. in new jersey, the sitting governor is a retired investment banker. he does not represent my values. i spent 40 years in critical research. in north carolina, the sitting lieutenant governor was in the newspaper, a local newspaper, making an anti-semitic remark that the juice controlled the economy. you say we the people, we the

people. you have a governor in new jersey, a republican, a very nice man. but now you have a democrat, a retired investment banker who does not represent the people. host: do you mind if i ask, you mentioned your values. how would you describe your values? caller: they are capitalist. why do i have to pay $6,000 for care that is not covered by medicare? i do not believe in the electoral vote. i believe the popular vote. you have written a great book, but it is we the people. not we the state legislatures. guest: there is a lot going on. i have to correct the record and i appreciate your passion. the governor of north carolina is a democrat. the attorney general, i am not familiar with any anti-semitic statements. he is also democrat, but it

would not surprise me if he said anything like that. i think back to the question of popular control. from the founders point of view, our state legislatures are supposed to represent we the people so we send them to the state capital and they are going to make the decisions and we trust them with that. if we don't like it, we can kick them out and they are easier to kick out than a member of congress. that was the reasoning behind having some of these roadblocks and not just having pure democracy. one point you are getting at and i think a lot of people feel your frustration. we look at who is in office. we say, this person does not represent my values and quite often, we are right. you mentioned your medical cost. healthcare cost is the leading cause of bankruptcy for households in america. the two major parties give us either government run healthcare or none. most americans want something.

let's have a solution, but the two parties cannot figure that out. why? because they tend to recruit candidates who are not like us, but who are like them, more extreme, and they tend to serve the interests of the activists and large party donors that control what they are doing. on many problems, immigration, healthcare, crime, we see this. it is very clear. americans favor a centrist solution. neither party will compromise to give us that. host: throughout your book, you are pretty down on federal agencies, but there is a couple of federal agencies that you advocate for more resources to be put towards. what makes the congressional budget office, the government accountability office, what makes those different? guest: what i am getting at is i have mentioned a massive increase in rulemaking by federal agencies. congress is supposed to oversee their activity.

i tell a number of stories in my book that are outrageous abuse of regular people in america by federal agencies with no intervention by congress whatsoever. congress is not doing their job. part of the reason they are not as they are tremendously outnumbered by the number of federal agencies and their employees. what we saw unfortunately in the 1990's and this was largely under republicans, was reduction in manpower and budget for the independent agencies that are supposed to provide research and data for members of congress can do their jobs. we also saw that memories of congress began to hire fewer policy experts and more communications experts so they can do the show horse thing inside of the workhorse thing. they largely aggregated their responsibility. one small thing we can do, with

a relatively small amount of money, is to beef up agencies that can provide information to congress about what the federal agencies are doing, how they are spending their money, how they are interpreting the law. that would correct the imbalance of power we see right now between the congress and the executive branch. host: this is dorothy out of raleigh. good morning. caller: good morning. i want to give you a quick suggestion and then i will ask a question. you know what would be really good if you all would have someone from your network to do a survey and see what the people actually want. not the ones that are doing fine , but the ones that say that the seniors need hearing aids or people saying what they need. get what they say they need and bring it up as to which politicians are talking about fixing it. not just talking in general, but

who was talking about fixing it. to go back to the gentleman, what you are saying, i agree with. but just like the people said, it seems like the politicians are picking us. we are not taking them. they are telling us what they think we need, but we need to tell them what we need and then they need to give us solutions. not generalizing, we are going to give you healthcare. we want solutions. how are you going to do it? how are you going to give the seniors enough money to get hearing aids or teeth or eyeglasses? can you put it in there? we all pay taxes. all of us. even children if you go to the store and buy something. we keep allowing politicians to choose us instead of us choosing them and we are not choosing them for the right reasons. we are not choosing them. when we have problems, we don't make them tell us -- just like

if i go to school and take a test to be a doctor. i have two tell how i am going to do things. i have to explain it and have a plan, a serious plan. we do not let that happen. that is why politicians divide us. guest: i had to restrain my amens. i agree. i need to take notes. i think you are right. we see for example the party leads, there is research that shows they tend not to recruit candidates for office so the farm team that becomes your congressman, your senators, they tend not to recruit people that are like us. they recruit people who are more extreme or temperamentally extreme. if you think about the presidential debate, we used to have substantive debates for hours. they would question each other and have opportunity for

remarks. now it has been reduced to this comedy where you have to get your soundbite in niskanen center -- soundbite in in 15 seconds or less. what we are doing right now is an exception to a goes on and television in terms of the discourse in this country. we have made everything a soundbite and that favors the people who do not have solutions because anybody can dance around for 15 seconds and look good on camera. but when you have extensive time explaining what you want to do and having a smart person asking hard questions, that would really root out some of the show horses and maybe give us more candidates who actually have some solutions that will work. host: just a few minutes left in the time we have. thursday, you are a bigger fan than the state government -- bigger fan of the state government than the federal government. i wonder how you feel about states that are going through the redistricting process and

the gerrymandering that we see on both sides every 10 years in that process. much of that people feel is politicians picking us. guest: that's right. there is a good argument for having these districting decisions be made by bodies that are ultimately accountable to the voters. there is a good argument for putting that power in the hands of legislatures. the challenge, because our state legislatures are just as polarized as congress, the challenge is that these party animals, what they see every 10 is the opportunity to adjust the boundaries to benefit themselves for the next decade. they are not thinking in terms of what is the best way to represent the entirety of the state, the liberals in texas, the conservatives in new jersey. how do we construct our districts so that we can give

full and fair representation to everyone in the state? it is a conundrum and it comes back to the reality that the two major parties are largely steered by small minorities of ideologically extreme people who are more concerned with establishing the dominance of their party and beatty the other side than with representing the people they claim to represent. host: the book once again, "i, citizen: a blueprint for reclaiming american self-governance." the author is tony woodlief and has been with us for the past 45 minutes. ♪ announcer: c-span's "washington journal," every day taking your calls live on the air on the news of the day and discussing policy issues that impact you. we are looking back at some of our most notable programs were in 2021, including the attack on the u.s. capitol building budgetary sixth and the second impeachment of donald trump, the

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