Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: We are a very complicated country with a very complicated
Speaker 2: relationship to family, community. I think all Americans just kind
Speaker 2: of wrestle with that, celebrate that wrestle with it. Wonder
Speaker 2: whether we have lived up to the nation's ideals. These
Speaker 2: are questions, maybe more at this moment than in any other,
Speaker 2: as we're on the eve of the nation's two hundred
Speaker 2: and fiftieth anniversary.
Speaker 1: Jill Lepaul pull It surprise winning Historian of the United States,
Speaker 1: I think from your voice, I feel that this weighs
Speaker 1: very heavily on you this moment in time.
Speaker 2: I think it weighs heavily on everyone, whether it's their
Speaker 2: job to think about it all day or not. We
Speaker 2: are in free fall off a cliff here. I don't
Speaker 2: know when we land.
Speaker 1: From Blueberg Weekend. This is the Michelle Hussein Show. I'm
Speaker 1: Michelle Hussein. America's big birthday is upon us. It was
Speaker 1: on the fourth of July seventeen seventy six that a
Speaker 1: relatively short text, the Declaration of Independence, was formally adopted
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia. Our final departure of British troops from the
Speaker 1: United States was still some years away, and so was
Speaker 1: the other key foundational document of the country, the Constitution,
Speaker 1: which wasn't even drafted until seventeen eighty seven. And that's
Speaker 1: the text that's our route into America's story. This July fourth,
Speaker 1: the Harvard historian Jill Lapau joins me to take us
Speaker 1: through her monumental work, We the People. It's a book
Speaker 1: on how the Constitution came about and crucially, how there
Speaker 1: was an expect that it would likely change over time.
Speaker 1: This is, not, however, an episode entirely set in the past,
Speaker 1: because Jill Lepaul is acutely alive to the pressures of
Speaker 1: our time, to a contested sense of what America is
Speaker 1: or what it should be. She's also unusual in her background,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about this early on. She's very far
Speaker 1: from an Ivory Tower type historian. She's served in the
Speaker 1: US military, and her route into teaching history at Harvard
Speaker 1: is a sideways one. Plus she's prolific articles, a podcast
Speaker 1: series on Elon Musk, and many books. We the People
Speaker 1: has just won her a Pulitzer Prize, and her next book,
Speaker 1: The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, which is
Speaker 1: about technology and democracy, is out next month. So here
Speaker 1: is Jill Leppaul on America Past and Present.
Speaker 2: Oh, hello, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Anything in particular on your mind today that you're particularly
Speaker 1: thinking about or state of the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you try to think about lunch just to get
Speaker 2: through the day. Really mean, that's my plan.
Speaker 1: I'd love to begin with a sense of you before
Speaker 1: we move on to your work, particularly because I was
Speaker 1: struck by the fact that you are one of the
Speaker 1: foremost scholars and writers on American history, and yet you
Speaker 1: have an unusual background as a professor of history, because
Speaker 1: neither of your first two degrees are in history, none.
Speaker 2: Of minor in history. Yeah. I always wanted to just
Speaker 2: be a writer and graduated early with a degree in English.
Speaker 2: Because I couldn't afford to stay in college. I worked
Speaker 2: as a secretary actually here at Harvard for a while
Speaker 2: and wrote novels during the workday and sat in on classes.
Speaker 2: I was a high school athlete, do you know, girl
Speaker 2: scout person with a great sense of civic duty. Had
Speaker 2: no money for college, and I got an ROTC scholarship
Speaker 2: to go to college.
Speaker 1: So which is the system by which your tuition, fees
Speaker 1: and all the expenses are paid for? In exchange for
Speaker 1: agreeing to serve in the military. Afterwards agreeing to serve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 1: Then what happened? What changed? You're talking to us now
Speaker 1: about your books on constitutional and other history, but you
Speaker 1: could have been sitting in the Pentagon listening to Pete
Speaker 1: Hesit speak.
Speaker 2: I do sometimes think about that. Yeah, And all my
Speaker 2: friends in college were ROTC kids. You know, you incur
Speaker 2: a service obligation when you went to your sophomore year.
Speaker 2: And I actually loved ROTC. But at the time, Reagan's
Speaker 2: foreign policy was really interventionist. For instance, in Haiti and
Speaker 2: in particular, Reagan was exploring what was colloquially known as
Speaker 2: the star Wars program, the Strategic Defense Initiative. He was
Speaker 2: going to build a missile shield something like the Israeli
Speaker 2: Iron Dome right around the planet to end the Cold War.
Speaker 2: And so all the students were engineers, and everyone thought
Speaker 2: the star Wars plan was completely nonsensical as an engineering design,
Speaker 2: and I thought politically it was also nonsensical. And I
Speaker 2: went and had a meeting with my commanding officer and
Speaker 2: I said, I don't think I could work on that,
Speaker 2: and he said, you know, cadet, and you can't be
Speaker 2: in the military. You don't get to choose. This is
Speaker 2: not going to be for you if you're going to
Speaker 2: be evaluating the projects that are coming out of the
Speaker 2: Pentagon as to whether or not you're ethically willing to
Speaker 2: comply with them. He was a lovely person and he
Speaker 2: was a very wise man.
Speaker 1: So it was a folk in the road moment. So
Speaker 1: how did history come into it? Then? Did it happen
Speaker 1: while you were working at Harvard as a secretary.
Speaker 2: I don't think that my interest in history is necessarily
Speaker 2: the same as that of many of my wonderful and
Speaker 2: distinguished colleagues, who I think are often are interested in
Speaker 2: the debates among historians about how to interpret moments or
Speaker 2: forces of change. I am interested in the relationship between
Speaker 2: the past and the present in a very vernacular way,
Speaker 2: right in the sense of I think we all walk
Speaker 2: through our lives wondering how we got to where we are,
Speaker 2: how the institutions we work for, are, the companies we
Speaker 2: work for, or the farms on which we work got
Speaker 2: to be where they are. I'm just really interested in
Speaker 2: inquiring into the relationship between the past and the present
Speaker 2: and finding explanations that, in my mind, often offer a
Speaker 2: way for me to think about how to escape sometimes
Speaker 2: what feels like difficult present moments.
Speaker 1: I'm also wondering to what extent the past and your
Speaker 1: relationship with America's past was there in your family life.
Speaker 1: Because you're the grandchild of immigrants, aren't you Italian immigrants?
Speaker 1: Is it true that your grandmother never spoke any English,
Speaker 1: you can never actually communicate with her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, she did. She didn't as far as her
Speaker 2: Italian we were always told mainly she was swearing. She
Speaker 2: was a hilarious, very earthy woman.
Speaker 1: But do you remember thinking about America's past in this
Speaker 1: very real way? It was a country that your grandparents chose.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, my father was born here in
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty four and was given the middle name Americo
Speaker 2: after Vespucci. But because he was born in the United
Speaker 2: States in nineteen twenty four is also the year that
Speaker 2: Congress passed the Immigration Act that essentially closed the doors
Speaker 2: of the United States to immigrants, certainly from Eastern Europe
Speaker 2: and to significantly from Western Europe as well. I don't know,
Speaker 2: I remember my dad telling me about that. When he
Speaker 2: was confirmed, he changed his middle name to Edward. That
Speaker 2: was his confirmation name, and there was a real kind
Speaker 2: of a rasure. He was one of those second generation
Speaker 2: immigrants who he was completely fluent in Italian, but never
Speaker 2: spoke it with us. He didn't want us to learn
Speaker 2: to speak Italian.
Speaker 1: You mean because he was embarrassed.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think most I think most Americans
Speaker 2: grow up with some version of, you know, their account
Speaker 2: of the nation's history as a version of their family story.
Speaker 2: Whether you yourself are an immigrant or you know your
Speaker 2: family has been in this country for generations upon generations.
Speaker 1: Do you think you'll follow the changing His middle name
Speaker 1: was a deliberate, active integration h try and be like
Speaker 1: everyone else.
Speaker 2: Maybe I think he was maybe a little bit embarrassed
Speaker 2: by it. But I once wrote an article all the
Speaker 2: Everyman Library about my father's books, because when he died,
Speaker 2: I inherited these books that he had, which are basically
Speaker 2: as college textbooks, and he had a copy of the
Speaker 2: Aeneid that he had really marked up, you know, which
Speaker 2: is a journey about trying to get home, much like
Speaker 2: the Odyssey. And I think my father had a very
Speaker 2: complicated relationship with the idea that he had come from
Speaker 2: someplace else. He was so rooted in the United States.
Speaker 2: I think for anyone also an Italian American fighting in
Speaker 2: the Second World War, fighting you know, against the access
Speaker 2: powers that included Italy, was really complicated. My mother was
Speaker 2: descended from Germans and her father had worked for the
Speaker 2: Navy during the First World War, but was a German
Speaker 2: American who was pushed out of that kind of work.
Speaker 2: He had been at MIT and German Americans were considered
Speaker 2: a security rest during the First World War. So I
Speaker 2: don't think there's anything unusual in my story, you know,
Speaker 2: I really I do think we are a very complicated
Speaker 2: country with a very complicated relationship to family, community, the
Speaker 2: idea of the nation state, the tension between the universal
Speaker 2: and the particular. What makes America both distinctive and the
Speaker 2: fountain head of universal ideas or ideas that have been
Speaker 2: embraced around the world. I think all Americans kind of
Speaker 2: wrestle with that, celebrate that, wrestle with it. Wonder whether
Speaker 2: we have lived up to the nation's ideals. I think
Speaker 2: these are questions, maybe more at this moment than in
Speaker 2: any other. As we're on the eve of the nation's
Speaker 2: two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, we're swimming in our history
Speaker 2: right now. The question is really whether we're drowning in it.
Speaker 1: Yes, So let's come right up to the present day then,
Speaker 1: and your book, which is heavy in its subject matter
Speaker 1: and physically heavy as well, because it's a it's a
Speaker 1: big work and it's about the US Constitution. We the
Speaker 1: people tell us about it, particularly the fact that you
Speaker 1: focused on how it was intended to be a living document,
Speaker 1: not a tablet of stone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we have to the agree that Americans
Speaker 2: kind of carry around with them any sense of the
Speaker 2: Constitution as having a history as opposed to just being,
Speaker 2: you know, a piece of parchment that you could go
Speaker 2: see at the National Shrine in the National Archives or
Speaker 2: something that members of Congress will waive these kind of
Speaker 2: pocket editions at one another. To the extent that we
Speaker 2: have idea that has a history that we could trace
Speaker 2: it over time, that ideas really relies on the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2: So like in law schools I'm speaking now from the
Speaker 2: Harvard Law School, law students are really taught to learn
Speaker 2: a series of Supreme Court decisions and that's how lawyers
Speaker 2: and judges are going to argue about the meaning of
Speaker 2: the Constitution. This is a reference to earlier decisions of
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court, and as an American historian interested in
Speaker 2: the story of the people as a whole, that always
Speaker 2: seemed to me something of a problem because it presumes
Speaker 2: that the Court itself has created a fiction about which
Speaker 2: is that the Supreme Court is the only authority on
Speaker 2: the Constitution and the only mode of constitutional change that
Speaker 2: it's possible is seeking change by way of the Supreme Court,
Speaker 2: when in fact that is absolutely of a crucial way
Speaker 2: that the Constitution changes, and the Supreme Court has an
Speaker 2: unparalleled role in changing the Constitution. But if we think
Speaker 2: about the history of the constitutions only that way, we
Speaker 2: miss that the Constitution was written in an age that
Speaker 2: celebrated what I call the philosophy of amendment, the idea
Speaker 2: very Enlightenment idea, kind of almost panglossy and like the
Speaker 2: world is getting better every day in every way. The
Speaker 2: idea that if you're going to write down a constitution,
Speaker 2: which was new, which is a new idea in the
Speaker 2: eighteenth century, if you're going to write down a constitution,
Speaker 2: and is an ingenious thing because then it's going to
Speaker 2: be transparent, the powers that government has, the limits to
Speaker 2: the powers of government, the rights of the people. All
Speaker 2: those things are going to be written down. We can
Speaker 2: inspect them, we can hold the government accountable to those things.
Speaker 2: We can insist on those limits, can insist on those rights.
Speaker 2: This is a genius idea, but that if you're going
Speaker 2: to write something down, there has to be a way
Speaker 2: for it to change over time, and it can't be
Speaker 2: changed by the forces of tyranny, which will be the
Speaker 2: inevitable mode of change that all of human history. Explained
Speaker 2: to the framers of the US Constitution, that humans, for
Speaker 2: almost the entirety of human history, have been ruled by tyrants,
Speaker 2: been ruled by force and violence. So you have to
Speaker 2: have a mechanism for change. And that mechanism is amendment.
Speaker 1: And it's within the document because I'm holding one of
Speaker 1: those pocket versions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's an.
Speaker 1: Article five setting out the way that the Constitution can
Speaker 1: be amended, which was essentially a key part of how
Speaker 1: it ended up getting passed in that agreed to in
Speaker 1: the summer of seventeen eighty seven, because without it, it
Speaker 1: was the way to bridge the disagreements to say this
Speaker 1: is what we're going to. This is the document we're
Speaker 1: agreeing to right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it was necessary at the convention in
Speaker 2: the summer of seventeen eighty seven, where there was a
Speaker 2: tremend this disagreement, and the entire Constitution is the subject
Speaker 2: of very strenuously fought compromise. But everyone understood there was
Speaker 2: going to be an amendment provision, because that's why they
Speaker 2: were there in the first place, because the previous frame
Speaker 2: of government was essentially unamendable, required unanimity to amend what
Speaker 2: was essentially the treaty that united the thirteen states, the
Speaker 2: Articles of Confederation, So they were there to come up
Speaker 2: with a new constitution because the other version couldn't be amended.
Speaker 2: So they knew they're going to have to make it amendable,
Speaker 2: and they did, but it would not have been ratified.
Speaker 2: So in September of seventeen eighty seven, the Constitution is
Speaker 2: sent to the thirteen states, at least nine of which
Speaker 2: have to approve it in order for it to become law.
Speaker 2: But in practical terms, all thirteen states have to approve
Speaker 2: it because what's going to happen to the other four
Speaker 2: They're just going to walk away, So it's a very
Speaker 2: close call. People have a lot of problems with the Constitution.
Speaker 2: They have a lot of the states propose some two
Speaker 2: hundred amendments to it. Even before it's they were willing
Speaker 2: to ratify it. And so the federalists who are the
Speaker 2: proponents of the constitution say, look, it's okay, we know
Speaker 2: it's not perfect. We did our best. None of us
Speaker 2: really entirely happy with it. Either everyone had a problem
Speaker 2: with something in the constitution or something that wasn't in
Speaker 2: the Constitution, And so their whole kind of slogan was
Speaker 2: if it was a bumper sticker, it's ratify now, amend later,
Speaker 2: you know, just let's ratify it. Like we're in chaos
Speaker 2: here as a country. We have to have a constitution.
Speaker 2: Please just ratify that. We promise the first thing we'll
Speaker 2: do when Congress sits for the inaugural Congress is we
Speaker 2: will send amendments to the states, And in fact they did.
Speaker 2: That's what the Bill of Rights is.
Speaker 1: But over time, over the sweep of these two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty years since independence, not since the Constitution, it
Speaker 1: has been amended very little. Why is that the case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a whole field of political science that studies amendments, amendability,
Speaker 2: amendment rates, amendment difficulty. The US Constitution, while undoubtedly the
Speaker 2: most influential constitution in the world, is one of the
Speaker 2: least amended and one of the most difficult to amend.
Speaker 2: It's not at the top of that list, but it's
Speaker 2: very very high up, and both of those counts. It
Speaker 2: has been amended really only seventeen times. It has proven
Speaker 2: to be the case that for most of American history,
Speaker 2: it's very difficult, if not impossible, to amend the Constitution.
Speaker 2: And then something pushes that door open, and then a
Speaker 2: flood of amendments come in. Then the door slam shut again,
Speaker 2: and then for decades and decades and decades, it's impossible
Speaker 2: to amend the Constitution. We're in a period now where
Speaker 2: it's effectively impossible to amend the Constitution. It requires a
Speaker 2: two third supermajority in both houses of Congress and then
Speaker 2: a three fourths ratification, ratification in three fourths of the states,
Speaker 2: and the degree of polarization in the country today just
Speaker 2: effectively makes that impossible. I mean think about two thirds
Speaker 2: is also the necessary bar in the Senate for impeaching president.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So in your view, is that a good or
Speaker 1: a bad thing? Do you dislike the idea of it
Speaker 1: being amended or do you think it's an important and
Speaker 1: necessary function of democracy and we should be able to
Speaker 1: get there.
Speaker 2: I don't honestly have a prescription. I do think it's
Speaker 2: important to recogniz that the Constitution hasn't been meaningfully mended
Speaker 2: since nineteen seventy one. That means that because change is
Speaker 2: going to happen, you know, like a river is going
Speaker 2: to find you can put a dam in, but the
Speaker 2: water's going to go somewhere. The water runs to the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court, and then the Supreme Court has far more
Speaker 2: power than it was intended to have, which is a
Speaker 2: deformity of our politics. Then Supreme Court nominations become hugely controversial.
Speaker 2: The public is really engaged in them. The Supreme Court
Speaker 2: justices have become really celebrities, personalities, characters. People know about them,
Speaker 2: their lives, They write memoirs, they go on book tours.
Speaker 2: That's not how the Supreme Court was meant to function.
Speaker 2: And I think it has contributed to presidentialism. That is
Speaker 2: to say that the celebrity ofification and magnification, exaggeration and
Speaker 2: amplification of the role of the executive who in this instance,
Speaker 2: in this iteration of effectively an amendment drought. This president's
Speaker 2: view is that whatever he says is in the Constitution
Speaker 2: is in it, and what he says is not in
Speaker 2: it is not. I think that's actually essentially a continuation
Speaker 2: of the kind of deformity of the separation of powers
Speaker 2: that has been out of whack since the Constitution became unamendable.
Speaker 2: So there's another argument why it would be good to
Speaker 2: amend the Constitution more often, and that is that I
Speaker 2: would suspect most Americans don't know the US Constitution is
Speaker 2: amendable for one thing, and we don't feel ourselves to
Speaker 2: be the authors of our own constitution. And that is
Speaker 2: the principle on which the nation was founded and arguably
Speaker 2: is crucial to the legitimacy of the Constitution. So a
Speaker 2: lot of the political instability constitutional instability we see now
Speaker 2: I think we would describe as insurrectionary, and amendment was
Speaker 2: the mechanism that was meant to prevent insurrection. If you,
Speaker 2: as a people wanted to fundamentally change the government, adjust
Speaker 2: something significantly like imposed term limits on Congress, for instance,
Speaker 2: you ought to be able to do it peaceably. You
Speaker 2: ought not to need to use political violence to secure
Speaker 2: that result. That was the genius of the amendment provision
Speaker 2: in the first place.
Speaker 1: I suspect back and forth in time founding father's present
Speaker 1: day quite a lot in this conversation, because those are
Speaker 1: the threads you're already touching on. But let's hear then
Speaker 1: from President Trump. I'd like to play you these words
Speaker 1: from him when he was being questioned by NBC News
Speaker 1: about the deportation of Kilmar Brego Garcia wrongly as US
Speaker 1: government officials acknowledged to El Salvador. Your Secretary of State says,
Speaker 1: everyone who's here, citizens and non citizens, deserved process.
Speaker 2: Do you agree, mister p I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm not a lawyer. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Well, the Fifth Amendments, I don't know.
Speaker 3: It seems it might say that. But if you're talking
Speaker 3: about that, then we'd have to have a million or
Speaker 3: two million or three million trials.
Speaker 1: Don't you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States' press?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I have to respond by saying, again,
Speaker 3: I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they
Speaker 3: are going to obviously follow what the Supper Court said.
Speaker 3: What you said is not what I heard. The Supreme
Speaker 3: Court said. They have a different interpretation.
Speaker 1: So when you heard those words, as I'm sure you
Speaker 1: did at the time, what did you think.
Speaker 2: He can't not know that it is his duty to
Speaker 2: uphold the constitution, that is the oath that he swore
Speaker 2: when taking office. I think the overwhelming majority of the
Speaker 2: legal scholars consulted across the political spectrum are now convinced
Speaker 2: that we are in a considerable crisis regarding the rule
Speaker 2: of law in this country because Trump's behavior has been
Speaker 2: entirely different in this administration, in this second term, which
Speaker 2: is to do whatever he wishes to do and hope
Speaker 2: that the court blinks without regard to its constitutionality or
Speaker 2: its legality, to just proceed and do it and see
Speaker 2: what happens.
Speaker 1: I think from your voice, I feel that this weighs
Speaker 1: very heavily on you this moment in time.
Speaker 2: I think it weighs heavily on everyone, whether it's their
Speaker 2: job to think about it all day or not. We
Speaker 2: are in free fall off a cliff here. I don't
Speaker 2: know when we land.
Speaker 1: Can you explain that what you mean by free fall
Speaker 1: and what it is that you see that that leads
Speaker 1: you to believe that it is so serious and and
Speaker 1: indeed on unconstitutional? Is that? Is that what you're saying,
Speaker 1: that the president is acting unconstitutionally.
Speaker 2: I think that much that many of these administration's actions
Speaker 2: that many federal courts have declared to be in constitutional.
Speaker 2: It's not my personal view as a citizen. I may
Speaker 2: have my own evaluations of it, but the courts have
Speaker 2: have declared much of it to be So.
Speaker 1: Is the central position in all of that the use
Speaker 1: of the executive order, or the use of emergency powers.
Speaker 2: I think that has been an engine for Trump, characterized
Speaker 2: by an extraordinary number not only of executive orders, a
Speaker 2: record breaking number, but a record breaking number of declarations
Speaker 2: of emergencies and immigration emergency and energy emergency, which gave
Speaker 2: the executive new powers to take action. And he was
Speaker 2: not the first to do that. In fact, the Democrats
Speaker 2: were the first to really use declarations of emergency for
Speaker 2: these purposes.
Speaker 1: Which Democrat woulout have been.
Speaker 2: You see a lot of the use of the emergency
Speaker 2: powers by Bill Clinton, for instance. You know, there are
Speaker 2: a lot of declarations of emergency during what George W.
Speaker 2: Bush called the Global War on Terror. There are circumstances
Speaker 2: that to some degree or others would seem to necessitate
Speaker 2: declarations of emergency. Those that Trump offered up seemed, I think,
Speaker 2: to most observers far more opportunistic. But you know, there's
Speaker 2: a larger story about the impotence of Congress, the relinquishment
Speaker 2: on the part of Congress of its powers to the
Speaker 2: presidency that has been happening for decades. The press's fascination
Speaker 2: with the office of the presidency has been a real
Speaker 2: contribution to its exaggerated powers. I think Americans believe the
Speaker 2: president is far more powerful than the president is constitutionally
Speaker 2: meant to be because the press has become fascinated with
Speaker 2: the presidency. That really started in the nineteen nineties at
Speaker 2: a time when Trump himself was becoming a celebrity. Right,
Speaker 2: The sort of lifestyles of the rich and famous was
Speaker 2: something that Bill Clinton really participated in, Obama really participated in.
Speaker 2: There are larger historical forces at play here that make
Speaker 2: Trump's presidency possible that have to do with distortions of
Speaker 2: the separation of powers and have to do with the
Speaker 2: cult of presidentialism. So I guess what I mean about
Speaker 2: falling off a cliff to get back to this isn't
Speaker 2: I feel like I've heered too far away? From your
Speaker 2: question as if I'm in a presidential debate, and I
Speaker 2: have actually completely failed to answer your question. But it's
Speaker 2: an important question, so I will go back to it
Speaker 2: and dutifully attempt to answer it. I one of the
Speaker 2: things that I will confess annoying as an American political
Speaker 2: historian is being asked all the time, is this unprecedented? Really,
Speaker 2: every query I've gotten from every journalist has been is
Speaker 2: this unprecedented?
Speaker 1: This?
Speaker 2: Is there a precedent for this? And I have recently
Speaker 2: decided I simply refused to engage in that versation. This
Speaker 2: is entirely without president. The kind of authority that this
Speaker 2: administration has claimed for itself and exercised over Congress, the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court, the States, the American people, citizens, immigrants, aliens
Speaker 2: alike is without president. In American history, the end is
Speaker 2: with president. In the histories of other nations, there is
Speaker 2: no precedent for this presidency in the history of the
Speaker 2: United States. American history is not a map that you
Speaker 2: can go to to see what's going to happen next.
Speaker 2: It's just not We're off that map.
Speaker 1: I'm really interested in what you said about the cult
Speaker 1: of the presidency and how recent it is so, I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: the office of the presidency is in the Constitution, as
Speaker 1: is the Supreme Court, as is Congress. Crucially, the beginning
Speaker 1: what happened in the in the nineteen nineties, What do
Speaker 1: you ascribe this to? This where the office of the
Speaker 1: presidency becomes bigger than you think it should be.
Speaker 2: Well, presidential power really begins to increase with FDR in
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties, significantly, but by no means continuously. And
Speaker 2: one of the things that amplifies presidential power are new
Speaker 2: technologies of communication. So of course FDR is the radio president.
Speaker 2: Dwight Eisenhower in the nineteen fifties becomes known as the
Speaker 2: television President. John F. Kennedy commissions for the first time
Speaker 2: Air Force one, and is able to travel in a
Speaker 2: new way and with greater frequency and be more visible.
Speaker 2: But it's by the nineteen eighties it turns out that
Speaker 2: Americans are just not that fascinated by the presidency and
Speaker 2: the president does have quite limited powers. In the United States,
Speaker 2: the Framers were extremely ambivalent about even having a president,
Speaker 2: and Reagan, who was often called the six o'clock President
Speaker 2: or the primetime President because he gave these speeches on
Speaker 2: primetime news. Was really the last American president to speak
Speaker 2: to a national audience routinely broadcast news began its decline,
Speaker 2: was replaced by cable news, than by the Internet and
Speaker 2: social media and the media landscape that we have now,
Speaker 2: and in competing for viewers and for attention, that new
Speaker 2: media landscape treated the present office of the presidency with
Speaker 2: the same attention with which it treated Hollywood stars, and
Speaker 2: so many presidents were very interested in contributing to that.
Speaker 2: So Bill Clinton famously went on MTV, talked about what
Speaker 2: kind of underwear he preferred, He played his saxophone on
Speaker 2: our Senio Hall. He was everywhere. Political scientists talk about
Speaker 2: Clinton as inaugurating what's known as the ubiquitous presidency, that
Speaker 2: the president was somehow suddenly everywhere on the merv Griffin Show,
Speaker 2: and now you know, on a podcast. Trump's presence is
Speaker 2: of a different scale altogether. So there's a continuum. But
Speaker 2: I do think that Trump's presidency in this regard is
Speaker 2: without president. But you don't get there out of nowhere, right,
Speaker 2: So the cable television, which has all these hours to fill,
Speaker 2: fills a lot of it with just nonsense detail about
Speaker 2: the president and the president. The White House becomes kind
Speaker 2: of complicit in that the more attention the president has,
Speaker 2: the more able the president will be to enact his agenda.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then our technological era, which is one not
Speaker 1: just of social media but of AI and algorithms like
Speaker 1: driving us in directions, were not even necessarily aware of
Speaker 1: what does that mean for democracy and for the exercise
Speaker 1: of politics. I know you wrote about your worry or
Speaker 1: fear even about how you repair the fabric of democracy
Speaker 1: when the technology is built to polarize us.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I spent this summer in something of a fugue
Speaker 2: state writing this short book called The Rise and Fall
Speaker 2: of the Artificial State that advances an argument I had
Speaker 2: made in a shorter essay in which I argue that
Speaker 2: because our public discourse is no longer public, but in
Speaker 2: fact is entirely owned by multinational corporations and overwhelmingly populated
Speaker 2: not by humans but by robots. Right, so all these
Speaker 2: platforms have become inverted where they're more bots than humans
Speaker 2: participating in our public discourse. X is owned by Musk,
Speaker 2: the richest man in the world. Facebook and Instagram owned
Speaker 2: by Zuckerberg. These are a primary means through which in
Speaker 2: the United States and in much of the world, people
Speaker 2: acquire their information as citizens about what's going on in
Speaker 2: their countries. That is not a liberal nation state anymore.
Speaker 2: That is an artificial state, one in which public discourse
Speaker 2: is automated by private corporations to ensure political outcomes that
Speaker 2: are preferred by those corporations, to maximize the profits of
Speaker 2: those corporations. When I say artificial state, I sometimes think
Speaker 2: people think it sounds like a like a tinhat conspiracy theory,
Speaker 2: like the deep state. I don't mean that at all.
Speaker 2: It's it's not secret at all. We all know when
Speaker 2: you're getting your news from X that you are getting
Speaker 2: curated news that is coming to make it impossible for
Speaker 2: you to find common ground with people with whom you
Speaker 2: disagree or believe you disagree what you actually believe anymore.
Speaker 2: I think is harder to say.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go back in a moment, right back
Speaker 1: to the founding fathers. But before I do that, I
Speaker 1: want to bring in what you've also said about how
Speaker 1: part of what is happening with the President and the
Speaker 1: administration is a reaction to what went before and the
Speaker 1: deficiencies all the wrong in some cases that you see
Speaker 1: with the liberal left and some of the positions of
Speaker 1: the years that came before the Trump administration, which might
Speaker 1: be surprising to people because they might well be listening
Speaker 1: to you and thinking, well, she's clearly an anti Trump person,
Speaker 1: she's clearly from the liberal left. You have found fault
Speaker 1: with positions of liberal America as well.
Speaker 2: You know, I this may be a fine distinction at
Speaker 2: this point, but I think there really is a distinction
Speaker 2: still to be made between liberalism and progressivism. So I
Speaker 2: think that when we think about the excesses of the left,
Speaker 2: I think it's worth understanding them and admitting to them.
Speaker 2: And and yet at the same time, I understand the
Speaker 2: inclination of many people on the left to say, there
Speaker 2: is such a crisis right now, the last thing we
Speaker 2: should do is admit some of the critiques of liberal
Speaker 2: institutions are fair. This is not a time to, you know,
Speaker 2: conduct an own goal. And I'm sympathetic with that position.
Speaker 2: I get it, I really do get it. But the
Speaker 2: long history of the rise of the modern conservative movement
Speaker 2: in the United States, you know, that really begins in
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties in opposition to the New Deal, and
Speaker 2: you know a lot of what the Trump administration wants
Speaker 2: to do is return the United States to an era
Speaker 2: before the New Deal, right, essentially unwind all of American history,
Speaker 2: to go back to a different gilded age than the
Speaker 2: one we're in now. But that opposition, you know, looked
Speaker 2: at what its challenges were to to power, and it
Speaker 2: identified three big sources of opposition. One was the press,
Speaker 2: which did not really celebrate conservative voices in the middle
Speaker 2: decades of the twentieth century. Another was the courts, and
Speaker 2: the other was higher education, was the university. And conservatives
Speaker 2: were in this for a long game, and what they
Speaker 2: attempted to do was defeat these institutions at arbitrate knowledge.
Speaker 2: That's what all these institutions do, right, the journalism, universities,
Speaker 2: and the courts. Right, they decide what's true, They advanced knowledge,
Speaker 2: They arbitrate questions of truth and falsity. And Conservatives wanted
Speaker 2: to defeat all of them. And you know, their success
Speaker 2: with the courts was phenomenal. They essentially took over the
Speaker 2: federal judiciary and have very successfully done so, both in
Speaker 2: terms of personnel in terms of ideology. Journalism they found
Speaker 2: it an alternative journalism, right, they find it an alternative press,
Speaker 2: and then just attempted to discredit what is now people
Speaker 2: agree to call the mainstream media, which is in fact
Speaker 2: the press as I understand it. What was hardest of
Speaker 2: all was to topple higher education because higher education has
Speaker 2: been such a vehicle for mobilization, for economic growth and
Speaker 2: for social mobility in the United States, and has been
Speaker 2: so democratized in the wake of the Second World War.
Speaker 1: And do you feel that, because you're speaking to us
Speaker 1: from Harvard, which is, you know, the institution, the educational institution,
Speaker 1: more than any other in the in the president's sites.
Speaker 2: Do I feel that higher education was the hardest not
Speaker 2: to crack it? Just I think that has taken the longest.
Speaker 1: Does it feel like the front line where you are
Speaker 1: right now?
Speaker 2: I absolutely are, But you know, I think there's something
Speaker 2: worth keeping in perspective that people in the front line
Speaker 2: are the people who are being rounded up by masked
Speaker 2: agents on the streets of these of our country and
Speaker 2: thrown into vans and deported. This university is struggling, for sure,
Speaker 2: and is being unfairly targeted, and it's it's contemptible and
Speaker 2: must be condemned at every turn. But the actual suffering
Speaker 2: in this country I'm very sorry for international students who
Speaker 2: aren't able to be here. It's tragic that labs that
Speaker 2: are doing essential medical research are shutting down. We're not
Speaker 2: admitting students to do basic research and the sciences. These
Speaker 2: are horrible things.
Speaker 1: And real things. I guess I'm keen to understand how
Speaker 1: it feels on campus, like how it feels on campus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how it feels on campus. Is surprising that our
Speaker 2: students are not out there protesting every day.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that is?
Speaker 2: I don't know. Why do you think that is? I
Speaker 2: am baffled. This baffles me.
Speaker 1: Fear, exhaustion, overload.
Speaker 2: I don't have I don't I honestly don't have an answer.
Speaker 2: I have no answer to this question. Every day I
Speaker 2: walk across the yard and I say, where is everybody?
Speaker 1: And maybe the reason it's not happening is that so
Speaker 1: much is most of those people do not have the
Speaker 1: vehicles that you and I do to call people, to
Speaker 1: pull strings, to to make voices heard.
Speaker 2: I think that's too easy of an answer. We're not
Speaker 2: going to get to the bottom of that.
Speaker 1: Okay, well let's go. Let's go right back then, because
Speaker 1: I've been promising this for a while to the period
Speaker 1: that you spent so much time thinking about the Founding Fathers.
Speaker 1: And I do want to tell you that, through of
Speaker 1: all things a celebrity TV ancestry program, I found out
Speaker 1: that I have a connection to Massachusetts, your home state,
Speaker 1: and that I've got ancestors who were at the forefront
Speaker 1: of the beginning of the Revolution in Boston, and you know,
Speaker 1: we're riding out from Boston defending Boston against the British.
Speaker 1: And it makes me feel suddenly connected to that period
Speaker 1: in American history in a way I never would have before.
Speaker 1: But when you think back to that time, and with
Speaker 1: your knowledge obviously of the present, what do you think
Speaker 1: the Founding Fathers would have made of America at two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to object to the question very respectfully,
Speaker 2: calling the AMers of the Constitution the Founding Fathers was
Speaker 2: an invention and a coinage of Warren G. Harding in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixteen, I believe, at a time when the Constitution
Speaker 2: was being speedily amended by the progressives of that era,
Speaker 2: the progressive era. There are four constitutional amendments ratified between
Speaker 2: nineteen thirteen and nineteen twenty, and constitutional conservatives of the
Speaker 2: day were outraged by this. They opposed every single one,
Speaker 2: from the sixteenth Amendment, which granted Congress the power to
Speaker 2: tax income, to the twentieth Amendment, which granted women the
Speaker 2: right to vote. Harding was among those who opposed amending
Speaker 2: the Constitution and was part of founding what was really
Speaker 2: the ancestor of today's originalism, which was the constitutional conservatism
Speaker 2: of the day. And one of the ways, one of
Speaker 2: the ways he did that was by talking about the
Speaker 2: founding fathers as our personal ancestors, whom we should worship
Speaker 2: and whose work was divinely inspired, and they wrote a
Speaker 2: document that should be considered scripture. And I it's like,
Speaker 2: the question is this unprecedent? It's one of those questions
Speaker 2: that I'm always like, don't ask me this guy.
Speaker 1: And I point out I did not say the words
Speaker 1: is this unprecedented?
Speaker 2: You didn't, and I'm not I'm not going.
Speaker 4: To being actually just really think, like I have been
Speaker 4: asked on national television, who's your favorite founding father or
Speaker 4: which founding father would you like to have dinner with?
Speaker 2: I don't want to have dinner with these people. They're dead,
Speaker 2: They've been dead for a very long time. They lived
Speaker 2: in a different era. They lived in an era where
Speaker 2: women died in childbirth. Your children all died of disease
Speaker 2: and malaria. I don't want to go back to that time.
Speaker 2: I don't worship that time. I thank them for the
Speaker 2: constitution that we have, for the sacrifices of the revolutionary
Speaker 2: generation in fighting a perilous, extraordinary war, fealty, fidelity, worship.
Speaker 2: Generation for me seem to be antithetical to the spirit
Speaker 2: of Americanism. So I don't have that, and I just
Speaker 2: drives me a little batty the way historians get kind
Speaker 2: of corralled into it by questions that have become the
Speaker 2: go to questions to ask historians.
Speaker 1: But is it even broader than that? I wonder are
Speaker 1: you saying you don't you don't like the term founding
Speaker 1: fathers at all? Other shades of the cult of the presidency,
Speaker 1: or generally a sort of over elevation, they were exclusionary people, right.
Speaker 1: You've got I mean, not just Native Americans, people of color,
Speaker 1: largely women. Often. You've got this brilliant bit in We
Speaker 1: the People where you detail Abigail Adams writing to her
Speaker 1: husband and saying, remember the ladies, if you don't put
Speaker 1: us in the picture, and you need to because all
Speaker 1: men are tyrants, we will foment a rebellion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I do think the reason I wrote
Speaker 2: this particular book was I just think we need a
Speaker 2: better constitutional history that accounts for as best one can
Speaker 2: between the pages of Okay, it's a big book, but
Speaker 2: you know it could have been a lot longer. The
Speaker 2: views of ordinary people who do have constitutional opinions, and
Speaker 2: most of them have been disenfranchised from much of American
Speaker 2: history and engaged in constitutional debate, have gathered into facto
Speaker 2: constitutional conventions. Black Americans did so, Native Americans did have
Speaker 2: haven't continued to hold, of course, constitutional conventions. Women held
Speaker 2: constitutional conventions in the nineteenth century. There are the fundamental
Speaker 2: tools of democratic self governments, governments or representation, participation, and deliberation.
Speaker 2: And people who couldn't be necessarily represented or participated, nevertheless deliberated,
Speaker 2: and their deliberations have never been quoted by the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court as having any implication for our understanding of the Constitution.
Speaker 2: And they lie entirely outside the realm of how the
Speaker 2: law thinks about the Constitution. But they don't lie outside
Speaker 2: the realm of how history accounts for the history of
Speaker 2: the Constitution. So I really wanted to write a book really,
Speaker 2: you know, taking seriously we the people. What have people
Speaker 2: wanted from the Constitution? Have people understood its merits and
Speaker 2: its weaknesses, what they thought had needed changing, how they
Speaker 2: failed or six needed in changing it? Conservatives, liberals, progressives
Speaker 2: all over the place. Some of the people in this
Speaker 2: book that I think have been least attended to by
Speaker 2: not only by the courts but also by history are
Speaker 2: conservatives who have had extraordinary effect on the Constitution outside
Speaker 2: formal amendment that is worth chronicling and paying attention to.
Speaker 1: I'm going to bring it back to one person to end,
Speaker 1: and that's you. This is the Bloomberg Weekend Interview. Where
Speaker 1: does your mind go at the weekend? Because I get
Speaker 1: the impression that you move between the present and the
Speaker 1: past all the time in your mind. What's your safe
Speaker 1: place that you can retreat to, physical or metaphorical.
Speaker 2: I raise sheep, spend a lot of time on the farm,
Speaker 2: and I read a lot of poetry. I really believe
Speaker 2: in the importance of experiencing oneself as fully human and disconnecting.
Speaker 2: I am a person who has not and has never
Speaker 2: been on social media. I do not intend to spend
Speaker 2: a minute of mine life engaging with a medium that
Speaker 2: I think has been catastrophic for humanity. I mean I would,
Speaker 2: I would go so far as to say that it
Speaker 2: has has certainly been destructive of democracy and of liberal
Speaker 2: nation states around the world. So, yeah, poetry is good.
Speaker 1: What poetry do you'd return to? Wad I will read
Speaker 1: anything we have Americans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have. We have a fairly big library of poetry.
Speaker 2: My husband is a big reader of poetry. In the
Speaker 2: first hundred days of Trump's presidency, I read the first
Speaker 2: hundred of the Penguin Little Black Classics one a day.
Speaker 2: And there's a new Penguin set I think it's called
Speaker 2: the Penguin Archive that I am just about to embark
Speaker 2: on one a day.
Speaker 1: Jill, Look, Paul, we'll let you get back to the sheep,
Speaker 1: or the poetry or the students, whatever's next. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much, thank you. And that's where we wrapped things up.
Speaker 1: Jill joined us from the Harvard Studio, and thus thank
Speaker 1: you NICOLEI Gidio at Harvard for making it happen here.
Speaker 1: The producers are Jessica Beck and Chris Martlou. The video
Speaker 1: producer is Andy Haywood. Social media is by Alex Morgan
Speaker 1: and our music is by Bart Walshaw. The executive producer
Speaker 1: is Louisa Lewis and at Bloomberg Weekend thanks to Brendan
Speaker 1: Francis Newnham and our executive editor Catherine Bell. Finally, a
Speaker 1: reminder of our email Michelle Show at Bloomberg dot Net.
Speaker 1: We do always write back until next time. Goodbye,