This week, the National Constitution Center hosted a conversation on Congress in times of crisis featuring historians and co-hosts of the podcast BackStory Edward Ayers of the University of Richmond and Joanne Freeman of Yale University, as well as political scientist Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. They explored how Congress has handled crises of the past—particularly the Civil War, other key moments throughout American history in which Congress played a pivotal role, and the lessons those moments can teach us as Congress tries to navigate today’s challenges. Center President and CEO Jeffrey Rosen moderates.
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PARTICIPANTS
Edward Ayers is Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities and President Emeritus at the University of Richmond. He is the author of several books, including the forthcoming work, Southern Journey: The Migrations of the American South, 1790-2020. Ayers is host of The Future of America’s Past, the executive director of New American History, an online project based at the University of Richmond, and a cohost of the podcast, BackStory.
Joanne Freeman is the Class of 1954 Professor of American History and of American Studies at Yale University. She is the author of several books, including, The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War. She is a cohost of the podcast, BackStory, and has worked on documentaries for PBS and the History Channel. Freeman also served as a historical consultant for the National Park Service.
Norman Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he studies politics, elections, and the US Congress. He is a cohost of AEI’s Election Watch series, a contributing editor and columnist for National Journal and The Atlantic, a BBC News election analyst, and the chairman of the Campaign Legal Center. Ornstein was a commissioner on AEI's and Brookings’ Continuity of Government Commission. Formed in the wake of 9/11, that commission produced important recommendations for how all three branches could reconstitute themselves and continue functioning in the wake of an emergency.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- The Field of Blood: Congressional Violence in Antebellum America by Joanne Freeman
- The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track by Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas Mann
- Southern Journey: The Migrations of the American South, 1790-2020 by Edward Ayers
This episode was engineered by David Stotz, Kevin Kilbourne, and Greg Scheckler and produced by Jackie McDermott and Tanaya Tauber.
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TRANSCRIPT
This transcript may not be in its final form, accuracy may vary, and it may be updated or revised in the future.
Jackie McDermott: [00:00:00] Welcome to Live at the National Constitution Center. The podcast sharing live constitutional conversations hosted by the national constitution center. I'm Jackie McDermott, the show's producer. This week, the NCC hosted a conversation on Congress in crisis. The panel featured historians and hosts of the podcast, Backstory, Joanne Freeman and Edward Ayers, as well as political scientists, Norm Ornstein.
They discussed how Congress has functioned in times of crisis instability and change throughout history. And the lessons that history can teach us for the challenges of today. Here's NCC president, Jeffrey Rosen to get the conversation started.
Jeffery Rosen: [00:00:46] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the national constitution center and another program of America's town hall. I am Jeffrey Rosen, the president of this wonder institution. And it is so meaningful when we begin these programs to recite together in our homes or wherever we're watching the mission statement of the National Constitution Center to inspire ourselves for the learning ahead.
So here we go and recite along with me, the National Constitution Center is the only institution in America, chartered by Congress to increase awareness and understanding of the constitution among the American people. Beautiful. I can kind of feel you're doing it through the screen every time we recite it together.
And it is so meaningful to learn with you. We have some great programs coming up on June 30th. We are hosting a town hall with our friends at the Atlantic where we co-run the battle for the constitution website, and it's going to be a great two-part program. We begin by discussing the future of policing with Charles Ramsey, the former DC and Washington, and Philadelphia police commissioner, and Tracy Meares and amazing scholar of policing at Yale law school along with John Inazu.
And then we'll have a discussion about the constitution and the Corona crisis. So that'll be on June 30th and please sign up @constitutioncenter.org forward slash. Debate, we will take questions throughout the program. I know how engaged you are as an audience. So put your questions in the chat box as we're talking and I will integrate them and offer them up to our scholars, throughout the evening.
So please, ask early and often, 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 vexations. Edward Ayers is Tucker-Boatwright, professor of the humanities and president Emeritus at the university of.
Richmond. He is the author of many right books on the civil war and reconstruction, including, and I'll 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 at 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.
Edward Ayers: [00:03:14] My pleasure, thank you.
Jeffery Rosen: [00:03:15] And Joanne Freeman is 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 cohost with Ed Ayres. Of the very popular American history podcast, Backstory, 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 pathbreaking affairs of honor national politics in the new republics, as well as field of blood violence in Congress and the road to the civil war.
Joanne, it is such an honor to have you with us.
Joanne Freeman: [00:04:00] Thanks for having me.
Jeffery Rosen: [00:04:01] And Norman Ornstein is 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, the desperate and the not yet
departed. I love Norman's book titles because the next one we did at the Constitution Center and it depressed 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 very relevant for tonight as well. The broken branch, how Congress is failing America and how to get it back on track.
He's a friend of the center and appears frequently in our programs Norm it's wonderful to have your back.
Norm Ornstein: [00:04:43] Always a pleasure. Jeff.
Jeffery Rosen: [00:04:44] Let us jump right in to the history of the violence that consumed the nation. In general and Congress in particular, in the years leading up to the civil war and Joanne we'll begin with you because you're the book field of blood describes it.
So vividly the statistics that you talk about. So striking between 1830 and 1860 you're right. There were more than 70 violent incidents between congressmen in the house and Senate chambers or on nearby streets and dueling grounds. And you note that it wasn't confined to. Congress between July and October, 1835 alone, there were 109, riots nationwide 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.
Joanne Freeman: [00:05:41] 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. I'll call it extreme violence really begins in the 1830s. It's not a constant wave. It sort of comes and goes, but it's 1830s and forties and fifties that see these incidents.
And what's interesting. And what's totally logical is that if you track, who's 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 duel and more willing to engage in hand to hand combat
than some of the northerners. And they use that advantage on the floor. They use 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. And over time, what happens is that by the 1850s, the mid 1850, some northerners decide that it can be their tool too.
Jeffery Rosen: [00:07:55] That's such a powerful turn in the book. When you describe how the decision of northerners to challenge southerners to duels 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 duelers to fight you, right? It became known that some Southern Northern senators were ready to fight for sufficient cause the tone of Southern insight softened although abuse went on and I have to say finally that we have this really wonderful new exhibit on the civil war and reconstruction.
We have Thaddeus Stevens's cane. And when I show the cane and tell the Charles Sumner story, I quote your book about how some people would run for Congress during that period on grounds that my left hook is better than the other guy I'm going to beat him up. Cause I'm tougher and you bring that to life.
So incredibly powerfully, Norm Ornstein, it's often said, or at least it has been said by Nolan McCarty, who's a scholar at Princeton that we are more polarized today. Then at any time, since the civil war, you're such an expert of party systems. Can you explain what it was about the political parties, right before the civil war that led us to be so polarized then?
Norm Ornstein: [00:09:19] So, you know, you go back through history and we see echoes of so many of the divisions that are familiar to people today. If you look at the period, leading up to the civil war, look at the party system it was very much in flux. We had a wig party that ultimately was, became basically, or lose transformed into the modern Republican party along the way.
We had a no nothing party that was, very bluntly anti-immigration. the ire, the focus was on Catholics on some, elements of Northern Europeans. In part, we actually had a president, elected on the no nothing ticket. And ultimately the two parties that we know today, or at least that we think we know today, Democrats and Republicans.
And of course we had that overarching issue of race and slavery and the parties struggle with that for a while, the democratic party actually had a pretty strong, pro or anti-slavery meaning, we had others who were in the party copperheads. Who viewed it in a different way, but of course it shook down into a Republican party with Abraham Lincoln as a president who became the force in the Republican party, the force against slavery.
Ed will talk a lot about how, things changed in the aftermath of the assassination of Lincoln. And what changed with the reconstruction period. All of those things, which were life and death issues to so many really created a level of polarization in the society. It broke down obviously along regional lines.
And those regional divisions continued to persist, but not necessarily in the same way as the parties changed and the democratic party, which became a more dominant party, many decades later. Had a merger of Southern and Northern Democrats, but those deep divisions that were there, the polarization in the society, the polarization of the party, Nolan McCarty is right.
That what we're seeing now, how is something far more distinct than what we've seen since any period in a hundred and fifty years.
Jeffery Rosen: [00:11:27] That's fascinating. And you're teaching that the party system during the civil war period, mirrored the polarization in society, nicely reinforces Joanne's point that the violence in Congress mirrored the violence in
society. Ed your book, the thin line of freedom, argues powerfully at every step. Those who had advanced freedom found themselves challenged and sometimes defeated. As this history shows, however, black freedom advanced, faster and further than it's champions had dreamed possible precisely because the opponents of freedom proved so powerful and aggressive.
Tell us about how it was that with each victory of the armies of, the South it provoked Northern support for abolitionism. And then as, as Norm invited, it's a really important story. If you could take us from the post civil war period through reconstruction, tell us about how the party system realigned and the country became less polarized, even as support for reconstruction was ultimately abandoned.
Edward Ayers: [00:12:30] So as Norm is saying, the polarization. Inside the North, between the Democrats and Republicans during the civil war. It's a fundamental fact that people often tend to forget, you know, people would say, well, the Democrats lost, they only had 47% of the vote. I think we've seen in our own time that the to electorate.
Doesn't just go away when they lose. Right. And so in 1864, 10,000 votes in different districts. See if that number sounds familiar would have given the election to the Democrats in 1864, after all the suffering of the civil war. So we forget that had a couple of battles gone differently. Abraham Lincoln might not have been so that substratum of Northern difference.
Is there. And this Northern Democrats were as racist as white southerners and they hated everything the Republicans were doing. So the war ends and the white South says, well, okay, we've lost. Meantime Lincoln's election. Andrew Johnson becomes president. He seems to. Cut some Slack for the white South.
Great. Okay. Lets push for everything that we can get. Let's put those black codes in there to reinstitute as much slavery as possible before the Republicans come back into Congress. But right now there's kind of a quiet president's running everything. This also kind of sounds familiar too, right? Let, let let's do what we can with this president.
And so when the Republicans come back in after riots in New Orleans and Memphis and widespread violence against black people across the South 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 rough shot. And so the, the white South just keeps pushing and pushing, Northern Republicans say, okay.
It's going to take an amendment to the constitution that you have to support. And you're going to have to allow black men to vote and to be delegates. But this convention is to rewrite your constitution before you can come back in, because you've shown us that you're not. You're not sorry at all. You, you admit that you were defeated, but you don't admit that you were wrong and you have congressional commissions that go out and talk to people across the South.
And they say, what we're looking for is rebel ism. The spirit that even though they lost, they are still the rebels. So the patterns that we still see playing out today, We're there. I'm not giving up my heritage. I'm holding onto this identity too. So as a result, you wouldn't have had the 14th amendment.
If the Republicans had not felt that if they didn't revise the fundamental law of the land, the Democrats of the North were going to join with these white southerners and take away what was one at such loss in the civil war. So that's what I mean by, and then the 15th amendment, because to really make sure we really mean it, you can't take away the vote.
So reconstruction begins ending almost as soon as it begins in Virginia. It's over by 1870, there are textbooks that put the number 1877 in our head, but reconstruction starts ending in 70, 71, 72, all along drenched in violence. So the white South brings on. The fundamental change law of recognizing that if you were a native born in America, you have fundamental rights.
That's a result of white recalcitrance of white Southern recalcitrance. After reconstruction comes to an end, the United States settles into a pattern that's going to follow for a very long time. Very closely contested elections with the South, largely democratic, especially after disfranchisement around the turn of the century and the North and the West Republican.
Those were the most closely contested or most finely calibrated elections in American history. All during the period of, and people think nothing's happening, that it's boring. In fact, a votes of a few thousand here and there could change the outcome. So it's a fundamental restructuring. But the commonality from what Joanna, Norman, and I are saying, polarization seems to find a way to happen.
Whatever the situation, a winner take all, two parties, us and them, us and them are shifting, but there seems to be a polarizing impulse in American political culture.
Jeffery Rosen: [00:17:02] So interesting. Thank you for all that. What a, what an important point that it was the fear of losing the gains of the civil war that led to, the support is the 14th amendment to wanna embody it in the constitution.
And we tell the story in the civil war, exhibit of the debate between Thaddeus Stevens and John Bingham, Stephens, I think saying, Oh, don't worry. We'll have the majority forever. And Bingham impressively saying, no, we might. Lose it. And we've got to put it in the constitution. And you describe how that was a pattern for so many of the gains of reconstruction and that warning that the losers may not go away gracefully is also very prescient and sobering, for today.
now Joanne, we have a bunch of questions, from our friends. Howard Green says when northerners are willing to fight back and southerners stop challenging, is that like facing up to a bully. we also have a question about whether any members of Congress we're trying to reach across the aisle during this time.
And a question about whether, in the prewar era were brawls most often over slavery or wasn't slavery, an unspoken catalyst. Maybe respond to any of those that, strike you as a, provocative.
Joanne Freeman: [00:18:10] Oh, sure. Well, the, the first question about, the northerners and the southerners, I would say that the southerners don't stop fighting.
They're just sort of thrown off their feet in a sense because the northerners who've been caving in all along suddenly there are northerners who were fighting back. Now the word bully that's asked in the question is, is right on target because that's the word that people used at the time for the people who were provoking these fights and Bully Brooks, right.
Preston Brooks, who. Attacks Charles Sumner. That was his nickname. And that's a word that's applied to people throughout this period. So there was a sense that these people, before the second half of the 1850s that the Southerners were picking on people who could be bullied because they couldn't fight back in the same way.
what then happens is that these northerners come and they, you know, the Northern congressmen, they were campaigning on the idea that they were going to fight the slave power. And there is a reality to that in Congress that they meant it. And some of them came with weapons. And literally made it clear and document that you mentioned that I will confess did make me kind of teary these three northerners, explain why they will now agree to duel from now on.
And the part that really captured me is at the end, after describing this with all of this emotion, they say, we're 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 clear precisely what I'm trying to describe in the book, and it is bullying, but what happens when you're being bullied?
I suppose, you know, this is a sort of, you know, simple answer, but if you stand up to a bully, sometimes that's a useful thing to do. I will also mention briefly the, the aisle question where they're not people reaching across the aisle. There were, after a certain amount of time, that became very hard to do and you can see.
the mere hint, at a certain point in the 1850s that someone would reach across the aisle to someone else, is sometimes meant by mockery, or, or even they'll joke, but the joke will be, yeah, you do that. And you know, I think there's one Congressman who says to another, you do that and you better tell your kids to put their Sunday best on because they're never going to see you again, you know?
So there were some people trying. Strikingly to me in the handful of years before the civil war, people were reaching across the aisle, off the floor, right. They couldn't do it on the floor, in the public eye with the press watching. And so they removed themselves from Congress and tried to do it in a separate space.
But by that point, those are not issues that could be compromised.
Jeffery Rosen: [00:20:50] Wow. That a reminder that compromise is only possible sometimes in, in private, during the constitutional convention, which was secret, you were able to forge those compromises, but when everything has tweeted in real time, or even when the press was watching in the civil war, that is more difficult, completely fascinating.
Norm, there are a series of questions. Everyone wants to talk about the present and friends we will, but we've got to learn our history at the same time. So that's why I'm not jumping right into your. A modern questions, but many of them are, our friends are asking, why isn't Congress standing up to the president today.
I'll just harass. How could Congress tolerate the refusal of president Trump's personnel who received subpoenas to testify before. Committees, should this behavior immediately been punished with fines or imprisonment? we also have a question from Ralph Hendrickson. How can Congress regain its oversight of the executive branch? And Sarah Cunningham.
Our very first question asked. Why is Congress, especially in the Senate now, so willing to bow to the executive, any precedent for this combined partisanship. So Norman, the process of answering those very valid questions do give us some historical context. During the civil war, it seemed Congress was more willing to stand up to the president for goodness sakes.
The Republican Congress passed the civil rights act of 1866 over the Republican president. Johnson's veto and indeed impeached him, because of its distaste for his policy. So compare Congress is willingness to stand up to the president then and now, and why.
Norm Ornstein: [00:22:29] I'm going to digress a little bit, Jeff, cause I want to bring in a little more history too, but one thing I would say, just to set that context there, a wonderful book by the historian Fergus Bordewich.
Called the first Congress and the first Congress did not consist of a lot of, wonderful towering figures. other than a James Madison here or there, there were a lot of pretty mediocre people, but they all saw that they'd better establish this as an institution. That meant something that had respect and they did some quite remarkable things, including the bill of rights.
Of course. because they had institutional loyalty in this sense that if they were constitution were going to work, they'd better get it going. But to step back a little bit, the constitution was set up through those compromises to give an inordinate amount of power to the South. They knew it, it wasn't just the way that they set up a portionment the so-called three fifths compromise the, electoral college, the nature of the house of representatives.
Gave him a lot of clout and because of this determination to maintain slavery and in the 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 was because the southerners saw that if they kept responding to the population by adding members, it was going to dilute their power and give more power actually to African Americans who were emerging.
So they figured it out how to keep the size at 435 and use their power of redistricting and apportionment use their ability to maintain control, to basically keep, blacks from having any role or significant role in the South. And to keep the laws such that there wouldn't be significant civil rights, which of course we didn't get until the 1960s.
So there's a lot of history here. We have to keep in mind and we also have to keep in mind that. It was those Southern Democrats who from the 1930s, all the way, through, really, a long period of time, 40 consecutive years of power in the house of representatives for Democrats, where they could build a compromised coalition with Northern Democrats that maintained voter suppression and their role in the South, while giving Democrats power.
And then the aftermath of that as the South changed, and as our regions began to change, it was the Republicans who moved in, took over from Southern Democrats and began to court voters in a way that also was focused around race and suppressing the power of race. So I want to get all of that on the table.
Now, what I would say about the questions that were asked directly is 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 a change in our politics and in particular, a change in the Republican party that I would believe.
And I would say bluntly has it more a cult now than a traditional political party and what the framers built in from the beginning, a recognition that you could end up with a president who would not. Behave in a fashion that put the entire country first, who might look out for his own economic interests or his family's economic interests or subordinate, the interests of the country to foreign powers sometimes for economic gain.
And they built in safeguards. The electoral college was one but prime among them was the first branch, which, because it was elected independently. Because it was not beholden to a president because of a belief that the members would have, what political scientists in recent decades have called institutional patriotism would provide those checks and balances.
And if you have a party that subordinates its own institutional interests to that of a corrupt president or a cult, then you're going to lose that fundamental check. And if another one of those 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'll lose many of those checks and balances, and we've 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 to use the power of the purse, to put some boundaries around a 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 that's what we've had in the last several years. And it's not something that I think the framers would have viewed in a positive light.
Jeffery Rosen: [00:27:46] Very interesting. Some powerful statements, following up on what you just said, Eileen McConnell asked says, define the difference between polarization tribalism, Eileen.
I heard norm saying, it's the difference between a clash of ideas, which we saw at the time of the civil war and just a classroom of partisanship, which we're seeing today, where today people are unwilling to buck their party, in a way that they weren't, back in the civil war when Congress took its institutional role more seriously, even when that meant disagreeing with a president from the same party.
Norm Ornstein: [00:28:19] So just very quickly, if you view the other party as were the people who were all trying to solve problems, they just have misguided ideas. You can agree on what the problems are and then work through compromises and the political process where you can at least achieve some accomplishments along the way.
If you begin to believe that the other party is a group of evil people trying to destroy your way of life, then preventing them from gaining power. Keeping them down becomes a central goal and you will swallow hard and accept a number of things that otherwise would be unacceptable to you. And that's where we are now in that I believe is the fundamental difference.
Jeffery Rosen: [00:29:00] That's amazing. Ed Ayers I have to ask, whether you take for Norms, comment, that people were actually less willing to recognize members of the opposite party, as you know, people of good faith, today than they were at the time of the civil war, which is an amazing statement. And then I'm going to ask you to tell our friends who are watching about the really powerful websites that you've helped to establish electing the house of.
Representatives where you seek to recapture the role of Congress as an equal branch of government worthy of studying side by side with the presidency. And you have really granular data about how landslide presidential wins often failed to produce policy victories. and you really need both congressional and presidential majority is to coincide to get sweeping legislative reforms.
Edward Ayers: [00:29:49] Yeah. The fact is that political scientists, in some ways we're better than historians looking over long periods of time. We're really good at these moments and seeing the contingency and how things could have turned out different cause they always could have. Right. But if you pull the camera back and you can see it as the broad patterns, Norm mentioned that the Democrats maintain control of the house.
From 1954 through 1994. Think about all the things that were happening in America in those years, and yet the apparent stability of partisanship. Yeah. That's something to think about. We don't want to glorify that because in many ways that control this norm set 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're not dueling each other, they can feel a kind of a solidarity part of what we're seeing now is a political system. That encompasses more Americans and there's an. Which is obviously the way things should be. But if you think about the stability in the house of representatives for decade after decade after decade, we want to point out that was in many ways, a, kind of, a deal in which the white South would get what it wanted.
Being left alone with segregation for as long as possible at the same time, it would make it would work say before this FDR, so you'd have elaborate deals and rich different constituencies were searched. So I agree with what Norm was saying is that all the norms have fallen apart, so to speak, in recent times.
But the fact is, is that we don't want to forget that all of American politics has been built. On tribal identity, it was racial for most of American history and it was made invisible by disfranchisement and suppression of voting. So we're seeing that the map that you refer to allows us to see how every congressional district in the United States has voted.
From 1840 to the present and you can see which ones flip, I come from. A very strange one in there. I come from the only congressional district in the South that has voted Republican since the civil war. So when people look at this later, not now, you will see in the corner of Tennessee, there's one little red. Error.
And that's where I went to Andrew Johnson elementary school there. And we had the identity of being this Republican area, now in my lifetime to go from what being Republican in the 1950s in the South. And what being Republican today means are entirely different things. That's another thing that is confusing. That this map helps understand the labels.
You'll see people today attacking Democrats to want to support getting rid of Confederate monuments because all those guys are Democrats back in the day and they were being hypocrites well, but being a Democrat in the 1850s and what being a Democrat today means are entirely different things. So, but I think being able to see the broad shifts and a great stability in voting, I don't know that it gives us any confidence that there's going to be stabilization.
I think it's some ways what allows us to see is that after the great transition of the South from Democrat to Republican, The system has it with Newt Gingrich coming in. There's a kind of disequilibrium that I think is feeding through the political system that has many origins in the social system.
Jeffery Rosen: [00:33:28] Fascinating. We will talk about, some of those, causes and Donna Cone asks where's the website and we've just posted it and please explore the link. Not now friends, cause you have to listen closely to the discussion, no surfing during class, but afterwards just an amazing website and really illuminating to dig into a particular election year.
And. Learn about it. Joanne, one important theme that you raised, in the civil war era and is now relevant, obviously today to polarization is technology. And some have attributed our current, polarization to a world where, as Yuval Levin argues in his recent book, people are more eager to play to their base on Twitter than to serve their at the institutional interests of the white house or the presidency or.
Even of the media talk about the role of technology and polarization throughout history, especially beginning in the, in the civil war period and what can we learn from it?
Joanne Freeman: [00:34:23] Sure. Well, the moment that I find and myself thinking about very often these days is the Telegraph, the, the rise of the Telegraph as a form of technology before the Telegraph, there was a certain amount of wiggle room in Congress that if you said something, you were sorry, you said, or you did something, you were sorry, you did, you could rush over to the newspaper office or go to the reporter and.
Change what you said a little bit, there was wiggle room and it was easier. I think, to keep things away from the public eye, because there was a more limited number of reporters in Washington. The Telegraph fundamentally changes everything that it takes away. The wiggle room. There's, there's, you know, 45 minutes, and everybody knows about something.
All of a sudden there are all of these reporters in Washington from all over the nation, who can. Travel that far distance stay there and Telegraph back home, what it is they're seeing. So Congress had Congressmen lose control of the spin. And if you think about, Congress, ideally speaking, it's supposed to be an ongoing conversation between the public and their representatives in one way or another public says what they want representatives respond in some way.
There is an election and it gets readjusted. Technology changes the conversation. And there are moments I think, and why right now we're in a social media, pseudo equivalent of the technology age when no one quite understands the absolute. Give and take of that former technology and everyone's trying to master it and manipulate it and take advantage of it.
And then every now and again, something happens and you can tell that no one expected that to happen. So, you know, if the Telegraph removed wiggle room, imagine now someone, you know, says something goofy at a private dinner and someone has their phone and tapes it. And then. Tweets it or puts it on Facebook and the entire world hears it.
That's again, a generation of politicos and politicians who lose control of a conversation to a certain degree. And now they're doing that at hyperspeed. So we're at this moment where, where the conversation has changed fundamentally at a time when. It's highly polarized and everyone is othering everyone else.
Right? I am American and I represent America. And you as an Norm put it are evil others who cannot be dealt with that's a, that's a dangerous time to be in this moment of hyperspeed. And then of course it's made worse by the fact that we have the first president who is a tweeting president. Right. And if you think back just to the a couple of years ago, people kind of trying to figure out what that meant, and if something's on a tweet, how do you take it?
And is it formal or is it not formal? It's kind of mind boggling. And I think we take it for granted the degree to which a technology can fundamentally scramble the workings of democracy. And I think that's some of what we're kind of feeling our way through right now.
Jeffery Rosen: [00:37:24] Ways in which technology can sort of scramble. The workings of democracy is a very good way of putting it. And we certainly are feeling our way through it in a, in a dramatic way, Norm how did we, some of the polarizations the last time around, we saw similar pressures from technology and from a fraying party system, but nevertheless, we evolved.
To the relative stability of the postwar period. And what can the lessons of that reconstruction of the deliberative Madisonian model? Tell us about how we might get out of our current situation.
Norm Ornstein: [00:38:02] Well, it's not going to be easy to get out of it. Jeff, I will say listening to Joanne, which was just wonderful.
There's a little book called the Victorian internet, which is just a wonderful description of how the Telegraph transformed the world. And many people thought it would be just wonderful that we would be able to communicate face to face and Wars would end and, and lots of things would change for the better.
And what we see now of course, is things can be change for the better, but they can also change very much for the worst. And you can enhance tribalism and division, through that medium. But I would say, you know, when we had parties that were, as it were broader tents, which is what we've had in the period, really from the 1930s on to some degree, it was there before as well.
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. But we had moderate Republicans, from the Northeast, the new England region, some from the Midwest, a lot of them anchoring the West coast, which was a Republican, region back then, Washington, Oregon, California.
and we called them gypsy moths for that, infects hardwood trees, mostly in New England and the Northeast. And when we had this grand sorting and our parties did polarize ideologically. It created a real dilemma. We had leaders in an era that did not have the kind of populous surges, much of it until at least the late 1980s, early 1990s, where media and new media.
And, C-SPAN for example, could exacerbate some of, those divisions. But we have leaders who understood larger obligations here. One of the things I would say is we begin to talk about, or as we have been talking about races, this 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 Everett Dirksen, in the Senate, it was Bill Mcculloch from, Ohio, in the house who helped to make sure that you could overcome the Southern democratic opposition to those things. But as we began to see these changes, that polarized us further. The opportunity was there exacerbated by technological change, tribal media emerging talk radio, as well as cable news with leaders who found that they could gain power and advancement by adding to this tribalism and the business models that work that have had us careen out of control and without major changes in media.
And that's going to be very hard to bring about. Without this sense of a jolt. And what I believe has happened now is we have a Republican party that I think is going to have to go through at least three elections in a row with losses, not just in 2020, but in 2022, again, to begin to give traction back to what will be quite conservative people, but problem solving, oriented, and not willing to use some of these divisive things like race and immigration and the way they've been used in the past.
They'll begin to write the ship and move us back in a different direction. But it's not going to come easily and it's not going to be, it's not going to come through quickly. I'm afraid we have to brace ourselves for what's going to be an extended period of real challenges, trying to solve the major problems that we have, economic, racial, and otherwise.
Jeffery Rosen: [00:41:52] Thank you for, for that sobering, but important thought. Exactly. We'll get, we'll come up with another book title and we'll just have to take a Xanax at the end of this show. Absolutely. What, what is that right? I'm sure it will be. Ed we're at the kind of solutions. Part of the discussion, several of our friends in the audience are asking, as char does, how big a crisis is this?
Do you see a path to fix the problems with Congress? The electoral college gerrymandered districts, voter suppression, Norm just suggested you'd need a total reconception in the way that, the parties relate to the media to get them to be able to begin deliberating again. So. Your thoughts on solutions.
And then I have to ask because it's such a great shout out to your teaching abilities. William Fralin says Ed Ayers was my favorite professor at the University of Virginia. So you have to ask my question. Okay. I will. And he says, hasn't Congress given up its authority and created the Imperial presidency they're complaining about.
Edward Ayers: [00:42:54] Well, thanks for the nice plug. I feel. That's important to think about what's happening right now, outside the political system, that's going to have profound effects on the political system. So we've been referred including myself to southerners as if they were white, black southerners have moved American politics in its most progressive ways.
All the time from reconstruction. There's no 14th amendment. If African American people are not making it clear, they are willing to risk their lives to vote, right? Unless they're 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, to learn, to read and write to exercise.
They're incredible speakers. So reconstruction is not just Republicans in the North. It's black people in the South were putting their lives on the line to show what they would do with American freedom. Then you take the people with the least power in American society, poor African American southerners.
After a hundred years of disfranchisement and segregation, they're the ones who lead the great moral revolution of United States in the civil rights movement and the voting rights act and civil rights act that follow that's not going to happen if they are not. In the streets today, black lives matter is also showing.
Look, you have gridlock, you are all tied up and worrying about each other's tweets. Meantime, we're dying. Things are going to have to change. So I think a more optimistic through line through these stories is that the people who have been the most victimized by the American political system have also been the people most eloquent in articulating American ideals and fighting for them.
So it's hard to know who would have thought, think about it. All of this history is the constant surprise who would have thought just two or three years ago. That most Americans would have supported weeks long protest, against the police. And it's the way that it was done. It's the voice that people are using.
So the only lesson I've been able to discover in 40 years of studying history is that nobody ever has any idea what's going to happen. It's just one surprise after another. So here we've gone through this terrible period of dismay. We may be seeing the sprouts of a new era coming up. So that's before the nice words, from my friend, that's what I was going to say is that we don't want to forget that along with every effort to just empower people.
They have taken it upon themselves to find power in whatever way that they can. And right now it's taken to remove the symbols of the order that had held them down for so long. So there's reasons to believe that there are regenerative powers in American democracy, at work even now. Can you remind me what the question was from?
Jeffery Rosen: [00:46:02] That was, that was a great answer to it. He was asking as, as my questions to Norm were, why doesn't Congress stand up for itself? And I think you've given some good reasons for it.I
Edward Ayers: [00:46:10] I think when people know that that, that voters have their backs, they will. And so what you're seeing is that people are developing more courage when they know that they are speaking for a majority of people who want justice.
I think you're going to see. A new progressive era. That's going to be coming very soon. It's going to be sustained for a long time by young people, for whom the events of the last decade had been the formative political experiences of their lives. So I think looking at cycles, there's reasons to believe that some of the things that we've been worrying about may have a chance to heal themselves. We'll see.
Jeffery Rosen: [00:46:50] Thank you for, for all that. Joanne, could, can I just, can I just set it up here? Cause I have so many questions. Do you, I know you want to respond, but, we can't predict history as Ed says, but we can, as you've argued so powerfully and then all of you have learned from it. And can contextualize, I have to ask you are, are things seem less violent today than they were
during the time of the civil war to put it mildly, the protests have been, by and large, peaceful, and we're not seeing people beat each other up in Congress. So the first question is why is it that things are less violent now than they were. Man, if that isn't true in your view, and then just put on the table, this big theme that Susan Coleman raises in which you introduced the drive to transparency, televising committee hearings and political convention seems to get in the way of deal-making than might allow compromise.
Is there such a thing as too much transparency? And if that's true, then might the first amendment prohibit any regulations of media technologies that would allow the kind of moderation. And compromise that Madison expected.
Joanne Freeman: [00:47:57] Okay, I'll start with the there's a lot there. So I might have to ask you to remind me, but the, the beginning one I know was, it's less violent now.
And why is it less violent now? I mean, 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. During elections, you routinely had people killed at polling places. And you know, there's an incident in Washington in which, a Canon is shot off at immigrants at a polling place.
I mean, there was a level of routine violence that was very different. So in part we're in a different. Moment. and we are seeing, I think more violence and more threatening behavior than typically we might expect to see. I mean, I think that's part of what people are responding to. I think some of it's being encouraged and that's why it's there, but in one way or another.
I think, yes, we are less violent, but yeah, we're also seeing a lot of extreme language and a lot of extreme behavior that goes beyond where I think we would be comfortable with under normal circumstances. as far as transparency goes, you know, that's the eternal. Problem is transparency seemingly on the surface of it is good.
Right? Well, we all know what's happening. We can all see what's happening, but then just as you suggested, and just as my book discusses, when things happen in front of the public eyes, 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.
I don't have a simple answer for that. I just think that that's one of the. Fundamental questions of balance in politics generally, but particularly in Congress, which is so bound up with public opinion. You asked a second question in there. I think which I have now forgotten. do you remember it or else, if not, even to go back to what I wanted to say before, because I wanted to pull together with Norman Ed said.
Jeffery Rosen: [00:50:02] Pull, pull away. And I think this is the last round. So good closing thoughts for, for the, for our friends as well.
Joanne Freeman: [00:50:08] Okay. so, you know, norm was talking about run for your lives, that we're at this moment where, many bad things have happened and might happen. And to find our way out of them. It's going to take a lot of time and work.
Ed was talking about the possible blooming of, new kinds of progressive change. And I suppose the way I think about this is, during moments of extreme, intense, Change and unstable behavior. As Ed said, we have no idea what's going to happen. We don't know if it's all going to go down, you know, for circling the drain.
We don't know if it's all gonna be, be okay. And I don't think we can assume yet either one, but what that means is as unstable, as things feel now there's room for change. And so what matters now is what we do with this moment, right? How we respond to what's going on. On now how we realize the fact that what's happening now, things are changing.
We don't know what's going to happen, but there's room for growth in addition to collapse. and I suppose the way I joined them together is just too. Encourage people to realize that it's vitally important, that people think about this moment and it's important, let their thoughts be known. Some of what we're seeing now is a great sign of that.
but it's important for people to realize that they can help bring change and that things aren't absolute absolutely over with.
Jeffery Rosen: [00:51:43] Thanks. A wonderfully important note. All is change. Kafka says this in the metamorphosis and people can influence it as you just said so powerfully and thank you for bringing things together.
So well, Norm your closing thoughts, I won't presume to shape them. what would you like our friends to leave with from this discussion?
Norm Ornstein: [00:52:03] So a couple of things, Jeff, one is, we can do some things structurally 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 had a whole list of things that we could do that include enlarging. The house of representatives altering the electoral college, bringing us, if we could a form of the. akin to the Australian system of mandatory attendance at the polls, and other changes in the institutions.
There are things that can be done that would improve the process, improve elections, improve the institutions. But I'd also leave you with another challenge that we have. And I agree with Ed that we have so many positive things happening now, including I think a wider awakening among many white Americans, that, have been ignored for so long that Minneapolis and others have set out that black lives matter is a meaningful phrase, not, something to just, push to the side or ignore.
And I think the immigration struggles have taken us back to understanding what it means to have a larger and better society. But the institutions that were built by the framers are going to be more distorted as time passes. And it has nothing to do do with Donald Trump. By 2040, 70% of Americans will live in 15 of our 50 States, 50% of Americans in eight States.
And that means the electoral college is going to have more instances. If we keep it, where the winner of the popular vote, loses the presidency. And it means that 30% of Americans who do not reflect the diversity and economic dynamism of the country will elect 70 of the a hundred senators. And we know that natural residential patterns, as well as the way in which we do districts and a Supreme court that basically brushed aside doing anything about partisan.
Gerrymandering will distort the house even further so that what voters want won't be reflected there. And the courts are going to take us further and further away from popular will, whatever it is with those elections, we are going to have some work to do to prevent a real crisis of legitimacy in the system.
That goes beyond some of these issues that we've talked about and even transcends some of these deeper divisions along racial and ethnic and regional lines.
Jeffery Rosen: [00:54:25] Thank you very much, for that. and for, for, for sobering us in such a powerful way, Ed the last word is to you.
Edward Ayers: [00:54:33] The era of 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 largest, most powerful system of slavery in the modern world coming to an end was something that people could not plan for. The other thing I would say, as I read this wonderful report that Norm referred to the American categories put out, the final part of that, after all of these very impressive structural changes is the civic culture of the country.
It's what you're doing right now. It matters what we are thinking and saying and talking to each other, and we've got to keep that alive too. Whatever the election cycle brings us. We have to keep up the civic, cultural democracy alive. That's what I think.
Jeffery Rosen: [00:55:23] Thank you so much for that. It is such an important reminder. It does matter what we say and talk and do and friends. The fact that all of you are taking an hour in the middle of your busy evenings, hundreds of you coming to ask such great questions and you're hanging on our, every word. As I can see. In the chat box, is a reminder that when we come together to learn with reason, we can indeed appeal to the better angels of our nature and grow together in wisdom.
So that is what the constitution center is going to continue to do to just bring you brilliant minds. Like the ones you've just heard. I'm so grateful to all of them for having spread so much historical and constitutional light. Joanne, Norm, Ed on behalf of the National Constitution Center. Thank you so much for a wonderful discussion friends.
Thank you for joining and see you on June 30th for the battle for the constitution and the future of policing. Thanks to all have a good night. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.
Jackie McDermott: [00:56:25] This episode was engineered by Greg Scheckler, David Stotz and Kevin Kilbourne and produced by me, Jackie McDermott and Tanaya Tauber. If you enjoyed this constitutional conversation, please rate, review and subscribe to live at the national constitution center on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen, and as always join us back here next week on behalf of the National Constitution Center I'm Jackie McDermott.
