The Ricochet Podcast - On the Shoulders of Giants

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

Yuval Levin joins James, Rob and John Yoo to remind us of the Constitution's unifying purpose in the era of polarization and mutually held suspicions between the parties. His latest book, American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation―and Could Again, disputes the prevailing pessimism as well as passive optimism, settling instead on a hopeful case for American coalition building.Plus, the hosts discuss Kamala Harris's strange campaign strategy of running on "her" record, wonder why the kids are skeptical of abundance, and consider the appeal of 15-minute cities. 

Poor, poor, poor carrier pigeons. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long, John Yoo, and me, James Lilacs. Today, we talk to Yuval Levin about his new book about the Constitution, how it unified America once and could do it Again. So let's have ourselves a podcast. I've known her a long time indirectly, not directly very much. And she was always of

Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black welcome everybody this is the ricochet podcast number 702 i'm james lalix in a beautiful summer day in minneapolis rob long in gotham we presume and john you is joining us from california of course the crucible of sanity in the modern world. I'm sure he's going to tell us all about that. Gentlemen, welcome. Hello. Well, hi, James. John, this is where you... Right, that's what you do. Sometimes in radio and broadcasting, we like to say, the more dead air, the better. But oftentimes, we like to just kind of jump in

there with something that just gets the ball rolling. The ball now seems to be rolling uphill for Donald Trump, downhill for Kamala Harris as she's vaulted to the front of the race. She's America's sweetheart. And without really anybody taking a look at the positions, whatnot, that she's had. But perhaps over the next couple of months, we'll have the opportunity to revisit some old clips and see exactly whether or not those old positions are still being held. Do you think it's going to come back to... I mean, the New York Times

is doing stories essentially saying, you know, she made fudge on the stove. Here's her seven tricks to keep it from caramelizing. My favorite headline was from the LA Times. Kamala Harris'

knowledge of LA restaurants is large. Will that help her win the presidency? It's like, okay, you guys all need to just take a deep breath here and relax. It still made me laugh. yeah well i thought the time's recipe would be caramelized onions by now very good very good i thought i would replace nice

word i'm sitting in for steve hayward i mean you know peter robertson gets to sit in for steve hayward but now i'm sitting in for steve that's right that's right all right well now that you are sitting in um let's uh let in, let's put it to you. Do you think that, I mean, you were there in California. You saw exactly what she was able to do for that state. Tell us what her California record might be, how it might be introduced to the rest of the country, what it was. I have a piece up this week about her record as district attorney attorney general first i think people are gonna see the bad campaigner she was in 2020 once all this you know

happiness starts to maybe it won't end but all this happiness in the media starts to end because i think she's a typical of a california politician we in a one-party state. So she's never had to run a tough race before. And so I think that explains all the malapropism, weird statements, goofy character. Because if you're Kamala Harris, you've never had to run against a tough candidate. But the broader issue is when people start to look at her record. I think it's a mistake, actually, for Democrats to be praising her as a prosecutor, because once people see the decisions she'd made back here, they're not going to be happy. There are some very well-known cases in California. For example, early in her tenure,

there was a guy who killed a police officer, severely wounded his partner. She went to seek the death penalty. Another example where there's an illegal alien who's an MS-13 gang member, walked into a convenience store, killed the owner, shot up the two sons, and she didn't seek the death penalty. I think she had a very lax attitude towards crime. So all this talk about her saying, oh, I know Donald Trump, he's a felon, and I know felons. I think that's inviting the wrong kind of scrutiny. Once Americans who I worried about crime, particularly California, see the kind of progressive attitude she had. Plus, then you can get into stuff she does as a senator where she's calling for donations to bail funds for Black Lives Matter and so on.

So I think this is going to unravel. And where might that have been john do you remember i think somewhere up your hometown in the north somewhere i know there's like white stuff that's called somewhere where the people are grumpy comes out of the air yeah it's like water falls from the air in solid form things like this god's dandruff amazing yeah that was here that was the bail fund for the people who were who were burning down the streets and burning down the buildings and uh she was telling that we need you know basically more of it that the riots shall continue until we have equity uh spread in evil evenly or across the land uh so yeah there's that but again again um if all we get is happy warrior energy and smiles and no real particular investigation from the media, then I think a lot of the vast middle that needs to be persuaded may just say, well, she looks like more fun.

Time for a wine mom for a president. Why not? And I don't want that crazy old guy. So, I mean, yeah. So, Rob, where do you think the trump the trump campaign goes from here well they bet they better get it together um it should come as no shock that you're not going to find for a progressive democrat a really um incredibly aggressive media coverage that should not be surprising to them they didn't get it

for under biden they're not going to get it under when Kamala Harris is running. And they need to focus and she's giving them all sorts of openings and they just seem to be focusing on a lot of stupid stuff. At this point, look, you got 100 days, less than 100 days, so it's sprint. You don't have any time for throat clearing. Everyone in America should

know about every single one of those cases that John just mentioned. They should, the nasty term is to willie horton but people forget the willie horton story was true that he did he was furloughed from prison and he did commit corruption commit murder the reason that that worked was because there was no response from the democrats for the candidate then the most governor of massachusetts michael dukakis to actually defend the the uh the the process of furlough he didn't he just ran away from it it is in fact it crystallized the difference between liberal and conservative voters for liberal conservative voters on law and order issues

so everyone every time that this sort of like clown car of a Trump campaign starts talking about anything other than her record, they are wasting time and they have very little time left. The problem with Trump is it's integral to the Trump campaign. A lot of people don't like him. That is a real problem for him. And they know him well. And what he needs to do is not remind them about all the reasons they have to not like him they should be reminding them of all the reasons they can't in good conscience vote for this extremely liberal extremely progressive alternative

and they seem to be failing at that now which is surprising to me because you know just go back to the debate that that debate everybody focused on biden i said this at the time and yeah you're right it's terrible for biden but they forgot that it was absolutely terrific for trump not just because biden was a doddery old man but because trump was controlled i mean he had a little trumpy near the end but like you know we take our wins and we can find him. But he basically held the line. He argued passionately for things that he believes in, and he connected with voters. And I'm starting to believe that that is the singular moment of campaign discipline we're going to get from this candidate in that campaign. And if that's the case, it going to be um a disappointing um election night for him

i suspect uh and and and again always the problem the thing about it's a gift kamala harris has got to run after run on a record which is not great if you're a moderate or a centrist or conservative which is what most of the country is all donald trump has to do is just to stop being a jerk and stop reminding us how what a jerk donald trump is and how tiresome he is um that shouldn't be that hard and yet it seems to be a stumbling block for this candidate when you say that people don't like trump that's true but they don't like him for his personality, not necessarily his politics, his policy preferences, which can be here, there and the other place. is completely opposed to just about everything i happen to believe in from energy policy to gun policy to yeah aliens getting to illegal aliens getting uh you know uh free health care all of these things i just don't like i just don't like this guy so i mean and i i know there there is

that element i'm going to feel good about myself because i feel good voting for this person because it is a virtuous thing to do but you do have a fairly stark policy difference yeah but i would just say right there is the problem and i i'm just gonna hear right there is the problem it's the problem for the uh the the trump campaign is that when you start to say that people are going to vote for comrade harris they don't like trump are idiots or fools or they're just emotional well i know but that's what they are you start doing that you stop listening to why people don't like you and that is that is exactly how the liberals got in the position they're in now because everybody who said i don't really like those liberals they instead of listening to that no democratic party listening to america they just

decided to steamroll over that that is not a recipe for success of the ballot box i'd operationalize what uh what rob is saying. I think it's pretty simple. They could make a quick fix, which is usually in campaigns, the vice president is the attack dog, and the president is the one who sits back and puts out the positive program for the future, right? Doesn't engage directly in all this identity stuff. You know, I watched that Black journalist conference with the interview, and Trump likes being the attack dog. They should be sending J.D. Vance out

to do that kind of stuff. And Trump should turn to a more positive. That's just traditionally what happens in presidential campaigns. Strangely, it's the reverse, right? You hear people say, oh, they picked Vance because he has the broad vision

for what the Republican Party is going to be in the future. Yeah, it's a weird roles it's very strange and the the trump campaign could easily change that and i think that would have that would actually take what rob's talking about and put it into sort of real campaign practice it'd be easy except you'd have to have trump too and this brings just one other point is the trump campaign officials they may sadly look back on the days when trump trump was a defendant with fondness and this as the good old days because then trump couldn't speak all day he was limited to this kind of two minute sound bites when he was walking into and out of court and that's when trump was doing the best because he

couldn't talk that much the court forced discipline on. And that's the hard thing is if they could switch the president and vice presidential roles and then Trump. I mean, this is wishing for a candidate that's not there. Could be more disciplined. Then it would be a good campaign. Yes, we're always looking at the candidate we don't have. Go ahead, Rob. No, I think that's absolutely true. The structural problems are sort of baked in obviously

to the trump campaign but it's not as if there isn't past performance that you can use to you know as they say in the in they they say they won't do in finance but they should do in campaigns when did he lose in 2020 and he did lose in 2020 he lost after the first debate. And the campaign officials knew because they had focus groups and numbers of Republican men and Republican women in Wisconsin and Arizona and Georgia who turned off of Trump. That is what happened. And they were perfectly they have trained the Republican voter to go into the ballot box and to vote for the down-ballot candidates with an R by their name and to leave the top slot blank. That is a dangerous thing. You don't want your voters to be doing that. And it isn't that hard.

I mean, it's not like we've seen this. We've seen Trump do it. So it's not like he can't do it. It's just that he won't. And that is, I don't know if i was in the trump campaign that would be what worries me more than the jd vance stuff more than anything else it would worry me that the the most disciplined days of the trump campaign seem to be over well one other thing about oh sorry just one little small point is

a suppose harris does great and she is doing great right now. We shouldn't pretend it's not happening. But all she's doing, if she succeeds, she will just get the race back to what it was before Biden's disastrous debate performance. It's still going to come down to six or seven battleground states, and the country's close, and it's divided, and it's going to be decided by a point or two. And so that's the other thing is Trump really should be focusing just on those Midwestern states. The polling I saw come out in the New York Times today, it just seems to show that Harris has just come back to even in all those battleground states. But I don't think Trump's going to be winning Minnesota now. Sorry, James. Is she doing great or is it just being announced that she is great? I mean, we get this flood of relief from the media

that they have this wonderful charismatic smart bratty confident meme meme goddess got you know who can do it so is she doing great because of anything other than she's a beaming alternative to the doddering old man that they had before and yeah I mean, yes, you're always going to get a bounce when you introduce somebody new who comes in who's younger, has got a little bit more, has more vibrant energy and the rest of it before the honeymoon fades and people get tired of it. But I mean, doing great, I don't think right now

has anything to do with what she's said or what she's now. She's raised $300 million and the party's unified behind her yeah and she's starting to restore uh support in the democrat for the democrats amongst minorities women i mean this is i'm not saying she's doing better than they did in 2020 she's just getting them back to the same starting line as 2020 but that's that's an achievement because biden was going to get trial trounced yeah i mean look i mean four weeks ago five minutes before it's probably about eight weeks ago it was a it was absolutely de facto truth that everybody knew projecting forward that either one of these parties replaced either one of their top candidates with almost anybody they would get a bounce because the

negatives were really high on all of these candidates and one party did it kind of halfway not really but they kind of did it and um that's what you're seeing i mean this we would have predicted this with person x at the top side on either side so none of this is a surprise all of this the problem is that in a compressed timeline which is what this is you don't have that much time to define your candidate and luckily for kamala harris trump defines himself on the negative constantly and instead of defining her and again you know that bill that list of all of those people that she was ill served as attorney general of California, instead of having those be household names. What about this person? What about that person? What about those two kids in that store? We're talking about whether her father is Jamaican or whether he's like half Indian or like this nonsense, a waste of time. And if they brought it up, they started it.

They need to like get there. They need to get back into control. And they are not, they do not look to me like they're doing it. No, it might have not been the best way to spend the week. But at some point, since ethnicity and identification and all these things are of absolute critical importance right now, it is a fun conversation to be had, but not at the moment because our guest is here. Yuval Levin, the Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. That's the AIE, of course. He's the founder and editor of National Affairs and the author of seven books. The most recent, published earlier this summer, is American Covenant, How the Constitution Unified Our Nation and Could Again. Yuval, thanks for joining us.

Thank you very much for having me. Well, you know, the title of the book presumes that there is a period of unification behind us and a period of constitutional unification that could be before us, so that would mean we are in an interregnum of constitutional disunity. How would you describe where we are right now vis-a-vis that old piece of vellum? Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. I mean, we are right now vis-a-vis that old piece of vellum? Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. I mean, we are in a moment when we are not unified about or by the Constitution in the ways that we ought to be. And I think a lot of Americans recognize that we're very divided, but tend to think that the Constitution is the reason,

and are frustrated by the various ways in which it holds them back when they win elections or when they have ambitions. And rather than see that the Constitution is a solution to the kind of division we have now, they tend to see it as the problem. My goal in this book is to help people see that, in fact, the Constitution is much more like the solution than the problem, that it exists to help address exactly the sort of problem we have, which is the challenge of holding together a diverse and divided society, and that to the extent we're living through a period of constitutional failure, which I think we are to an extent, it's a failure of constitutional practice and not of constitutional design, and therefore it calls on us to reacquaint ourselves with the structure of the system and what it might have to teach us, and that's what I hope this book might help to do.

Hey, Yuval, can I try a little theory on you? You can tell me if I'm full of it. I mean, John already is rolling his eyes, I can see. In the strength of the Constitution, this strange document that we still argue and fight about. I mean, I don't think there's another document, maybe since the Gospels, that people have been reading and rereading and fighting over. In software engineering, there's two big categories of how you put together a giant software project. One is called Agile and one's called Waterfall. Waterfall is you go step by step, you accomplish one component and you move to the next component

and you move to the next component and you just kind of chip away at it that way. And Agile is you kind of, you start before you've got everything taken care of and you just get going and you know that there are weaknesses, you're gonna have to fix those later, but the idea is to keep going and you create a document that is both incredibly resilient

or you create a product incredibly resilient, but also has problems that need to be fixed over time. But the point is you got to go and everybody kind of agreed on the big vision. It feels to me like in terms of the software, the code for the United States of America, which is the Constitution, that it's an incredibly brilliant piece of agile coding and every argument we have about it when people talk about how well this is like well this is our problem we're still fighting over this we're still fighting over the second amendment i think that is the great act that great strength of the constitution right

that we're still going to fight over it, and our grandchildren will fight over it. I think it's absolutely right. It's a really good metaphor for how the system is meant to work. And it's intentional in a lot of ways. What you see when you look at the records of the Constitutional Convention is that the framers of the Constitution dealt with some very serious problems by containing them as tensions within the system, right? Were they going to empower the large states or the small states? That seems like a stark choice to make, but their answer was, yes, we're going to empower the large states and the small states, and the fights between them are going to be essential to the political life of our society,

right? Is the President of the United States an elevated head of state, or is the President a kind of glorified clerk? Well, the answer is yes. The President is both those things, even though that's obviously contradictory. And the presidency is a contradictory office about which we fight constantly and unendingly. And a lot of the most significant kinds of tensions that occupy us as Americans in our political life are contained within the structure of the Constitution. What that allows the system to do is to shift its weight as it needs to without losing its balance. It's extraordinarily precisely agile because it allows us to emphasize different things at different times. There are moments when we need a strong president to respond on behalf of the country to dangerous problems. There are moments when we need

Congress to be stronger. And a lot of the arguments we can have are about how to rebalance and shift the weight of the different parts of the system. I think those are a lot of our arguments now. And it's a sign of strength in our system. We underestimate the stability and strength of the American system. We've had the same institutions in America since 1790. There's no other country that can say that about its governing institutions. what strikes me is I could see a youngster reading this book and going, Yuval, you don't know what time it is. That's their big frame. It's so, you know, both the left and the right, young people on the left and the right, all have rejected the Constitution, right? The left is so influenced by the 1619 Project. This is the work of racists and sexist oppressors.

But also on the conservative side, there's this big movement, you know, saying, you know, the Constitution is also holding us back, you know, we should be advancing conservative social values despite originalism and despite all these ideas that tried to create a neutral approach to the Constitution these last few years. It seems like everybody wants to go beyond the Constitution now. How do you respond to them? You know, the book very much speaks to exactly those younger people, and one thing everybody wants to go beyond the Constitution now. How do you respond to them? You know, the book very much speaks to exactly those younger people. And one thing I would say is, I'm a conservative, so I think it's always the same time. It's time to raise another generation of Americans to be decent human beings and good citizens. That's always our challenge. That was your grandparents' challenge, and it's going to be your grandkids' challenge,

and it's your challenge. And I think a lot of the,-you-don't-know-what-time-it-is kind of arguments on the right now are a form of escapism from responsibility. They want to say, well, this was how we used to work, but now all the rules have been broken, so we don't need to worry about the rules either. Well, no. They're still here. We still need them. They still answer questions and challenges that are always with us, and we have to recognize that the burden of sustaining this system is the privilege of being an American citizen. But more than that, I think the objections, in a sense, the objections that you find in the Constitution on the left are familiar, and the book treats those at great length. They're the same kinds of arguments

that the progressives have been making for more than 100 years about the Constitution, that it's not democratic enough, that it's not sophisticated enough to govern in the modern world. I disagree. The Constitution is more sophisticated than these critics are about the nature of liberal society. The conservative critiques are a little newer, and i think in some ways they're misguided about the character of of democratic life and of our constitutional system at the heart of a lot of them is this notion that the constitution is empty proceduralism that it doesn't have moral content it's just about a set of procedures and rules. And I think the whole idea of empty proceduralism is completely confused. There's actually no such thing as empty proceduralism.

What procedures do is create habits and virtues and facilitate moral formation. Just think about if you want to speak for the Western moral tradition, which they do, and if you want to say you're speaking for the tradition, the classical Christian tradition that reaches back to Aquinas and Aristotle, in that tradition, the way in which we become morally formed is by being habituated to practicing the virtues. And what is the mechanism for habituation? It's precisely what they call procedure. It's the rules that govern how we engage with each other. And constitutional procedures make us into citizens that respect each other's equality, make us into people with some humility and some patience and an ability

to deal with difference and confront one another in a way that points to some constructive common action. That is deeply morally formative. I think the arguments on the right about the nature of the Constitution are just very confused. And I can also put a practical point on it is abortion. So it sounds to me like you would support the idea of Dobbs that abortion should be sent back to the states where we can all fight about it politically, because both conservatives and liberals want Congress to pass an abortion bill, right, just in different points of the spectrum. Even conservatives now are talking about passing a federal nationwide pro-life bill, just in the same way liberals want to pass a restoration of Roe versus Wade in Congress.

Yeah, and look, I think that's the venue where we have to argue about questions like that. It's not up to the courts to decide what our laws should be. What our laws should be is the fundamental political question. And that means we have to decide it together in those arenas where we can actually engage with each other, compete with each other, negotiate with each other. And that has to happen in the legislature. Hey, you all, I have maybe a political cultural question now it obviously the first 10 amendments first 10 uh amendments constitution happened all kind of at once right and then there was a bunch more kind of in a cluster and then there was a couple around the civil war periods

the civil war era kinds and then there were there's a bunch of them around turn of the last century um that were you know suffrage and prohibition things like that and then kind of a quiet period uh where it just seemed like whenever you said to people well you could have a constitutional amendment they kind of roll their eyes well man that's just never gonna happen two-thirds of this two there's that it's never gonna happen um are we gonna are we entering a phase when that is true that this the idea of like galvanizing the giant majority of americans to do this thing throughout all these different houses of government state houses and and and and federal chambers or um is this cyclical

i mean could we look at another period in the next 10 20 30 years where we reminds us of those turn of this turn of the 20th century spate of some of them were really dumb but we we managed to get them through i mean nobody i don't think anybody's really arguing for prohibition certainly not john you who's and that's your to get you up in the morning are you kidding i want to add more stuff just alcohol john wants to mandate drinking exactly i mean how much easier would be for us to agree if we all had to drink i mean i guess that's what i'm saying is like is it i mean is the idea that when i always say to people when they complain about like hey listen constitution's a living document you can amend it you can amend it and they all come look at me like, oh, come on, that's not realistic.

Is it not realistic, or is it cyclical, or is it something that happened in the past and is possible to happen now? Well, I think the Constitution allows for a lot of room for political decision-making, for changing the rules that govern the workings of American government without a constitutional amendment. As you say, the amendments have come in bunches, generally, and the last real bunch of amendments was the progressive amendments. We had a series afterwards in the middle of the 20th century to sort of fix a couple of things,

presidential succession and so on, lowering the voting age and there was the final so far the 27th amendment which was almost symbolic really uh at this as part of celebrating the 200th anniversary of the constitution the last real amendment was 50 years ago and that is a long time um i have to say for one thing i'm i'm a conservative and therefore i don't really see a lot of problems to which a constitutional amendment would be a solution. I don't think it's obvious now that there are some essential amendments. I think a lot of the problems of our political culture are functions of things we can change without constitutional amendments. The nature of the electoral process, and especially the primary system, the way Congress works. We don't have broad majorities for anything in American public life right now.

So the notion that we would have a broad majority for a constitutional amendment is a little hard to imagine, but these things do change. American party politics work in phases, and I can certainly imagine that 25 years from now, we're in a different enough place where there's public pressure for amendments. I shudder to think what those would be, frankly, but it's possible. I don't think that in this moment where we are now, those would be possible. And I think the pressures we do see actually reinforce the wisdom of the original structure of the Constitution. You know, the Biden administration wants to limit the terms of Supreme Court justices. I was about to ask. I was about to ask that. About that collection of, quote, reforms, unquote.

Yeah. I mean, look, I think those ideas are exactly an example of why we have lifetime tenure for judges. When you tell people, when people ask why is there lifetime tenure, you say, well, you want to protect them from pressure from the political branches that would try to kick out judges that make decisions they don't like. And people say, well, that wouldn't happen. Well, that's literally what's happening now. What the Democrats want to do here is exactly why there is lifetime tenure for judges and exactly why we have to retain lifetime tenure for judges. I think, isn't it fair to say that Donald Trump, yes, he's accused of being a threat to the Constitution or to democracy, even though we live in a republic, not a democracy. But when you read about what the

Democrats want to do, aren't they the ones threatening longer-term damage to the Constitution, right? Term limits on the justices. Kamala Harris, back in 2020, said she supported court packing these ideas about they also want to get rid of the electoral college they talk about getting rid of the filibuster adding Puerto Rico and Washington DC as states I mean I mean this is actually kind of like what Rob was talking about before the big burst of progressive constitutional amendments were designed to get rid of more guardrails on pure democracy. Isn't that what progressives want to do again right now? And isn't Kamala Harris the, right?

She's the head phalanx in that movement to undo this constitutional order you're in favor with. It's just the Supreme Court term limit thing is just the first of what they have in mind. I think what's always been striking about the progressives is that they go at the Constitution head on. They openly dislike the system and want to change it in fundamental ways, want to undermine been striking about the progressives is that they go at the constitution head-on they they openly dislike the system and want to change it in fundamental ways want to undermine it in fundamental ways and i do think a lot of what they're talking about here are direct attacks on all of the

counter-majoritarian parts of the constitution the constitution exists to balance majority rule and minority rights all of the ways that restrain majority rule are under attack now the bill of rights one by one who are they're working their way through the first amendment from religion to speech and on from there um they they talk the same way about the senate now about the courts uh the electoral college as you say it's it's a it's a strategy that seems rooted in this weird notion that they're the majority, which I actually don't think is correct. But in any case, that's always been how the progressives have thought about it. I think there is a danger to the Constitution from the kind of the approach that Donald Trump had to the presidency.

He was just not cognizant of the boundaries on the president and didn't care much about them. I think that's bad, too. But there is a kind of direct assault on the Constitution, a knowing assault on it, that is much more characteristic on the left. But as you said at the beginning, John, there are now threats to the Constitution from both left and right, and we all need a reminder of what the Constitution is for, why it works the way it does, especially the parts of it that are most frustrating to narrow majorities, which are the only kind we have now, are the parts of it that we have got to sustain and remind

people about, because those elements are what allow our system to keep its balance. The Constitution is meant to frustrate narrow majorities, to force them to grow, and to empower only broad majorities. That's the distinct feature of the american system it's not like parliamentary systems in that way right i think that's had a lot to do with its durability i always have a problem with my friends who like talk about uh i mean i get a lot of crap on this podcast from people like john you uh about being a rhino but you know when know, when I talk to my liberal friends, my very liberal Democrat friends, I always say to them,

your MVP of the Democratic Party is Joe Manchin. The MVP of the Republican Party are all the rhinos like me. You need us. That's the way the system works. You don't like it, I guess we need a prime minister. We're not going to get one. This is the way the system is. And it always astonishes me how quickly we forget that. Absolutely. Our system does not trust narrow majorities. And the reason astonished me how quickly we forget that. Absolutely. Our system does not

trust narrow majorities. And the reason for that is very straightforward. Majorities can be dangerous. It's true majority rule is necessary to legitimate political power, but it's also dangerous. And the Constitution deals with that by standing in the way of narrow majorities so that they are forced to grow. And some of the institutions built up around it, like the filibuster, which I think is very important to protect and sustain, are also, they work that way. All the bipartisan legislation of the 21st century has basically been a function of the filibuster. And the idea that getting rid of it is what 21st century American politics requires strikes me as just crazy. There's an assumption at the bottom of a lot of progressive arguments that there's this big majority out there, and it's being held

back by the system. But the problem we have is that there's not a majority for anything, and we need to form majorities. That's what the Constitution can help us to do. You know, you were speaking before about the right not liking the Constitution, parts of it, because it was just procedural. And you were right and correct to say that the entire document is fused with the philosophy of the time. It's like a building. The framework, the structure, the girders are the spirit of Western civilization, and the talking about, some way of getting our arms around this thing and making sure that it's adaptable for its next century. Because I think the instincts of the right would be still to constrain the power of the state and have rights be natural rights. And that the left would wish to enshrine in the Constitution any number, innumerable number of little detailed rights, which the state provided, guaranteed and was the source of.

And maybe that's the difficulty that we're talking about here when you say that there's not a majority for these ideas. Well, they don't believe that there are – the left may not believe that there is a majority for these things, but more importantly, they are correct. And therefore, the things that stand in the way of all of these things being manifested in the country are illegitimate and immoral and possibly evil and the rest of it. And that's why they would shred nearly any single aspect of the Constitution that got in their way, whereas I don't fear that from the right. I agree with that. I think that, well, let me put it this way. I would be worried about a constitutional convention from all directions. I think that

opening up the document in a way that some people suggest and just having a free-for-all about what it ought to be would not serve us well in this moment, but I would certainly fear the left more than the right for just the reasons you're suggesting. I think the Constitution was written in a very peculiar moment in American history, where there had been five years of war in the Revolution, a war against government that was seen as overly powerful and domineering. And then there were five years after the Revolution in which there was total pandemonium, and government was too weak and ineffective. And the Constitutional Convention responded to both of those problems, and so was aware of the dangers of weak government and strong

government at the same time, and sought for some kind of balance between the two. It's very hard to imagine that at any other moment in American history we would have produced quite that kind of balance. And so I think for that reason it's a good thing that it's hard to amend the Constitution. Sometimes we need to, but we should be very wary about opening it up i think it's great i mean they say the senate is the place where the passions go to be cooled i mean the the constitutional amendment process is is the deep freeze in which things are packed in ice and uh and good luck getting out of that which is good because as you noted it came out of a very

unique time but at the same time we seem to have been blessed by not only a time that produced this unique document, but the temperaments, the people who crafted it and who understood it. And that's what baffles me about the people who want to tear it up and start all over or just tinker it into oblivion, is that human nature, what they knew about human nature and human systems at the time is hardly irrelevant and outdated today yeah they haven't they haven't changed and they exist to this day and there's a lesson in that that an ahistorical generation seems completely delighted to ignore yeah i i think the notion that it's it's it's old and out of out of its time is the most wrong thing about the critiques that people offer about the Constitution. The Constitution is, I think, more sophisticated than its critics about the most difficult challenge that faces every modern democratic society, which is the challenge of cohesion amid diversity. The United States is, you know, the most popular kind of critique among political scientists of the Constitution most popular kind of critique among political

scientists of the Constitution is a kind of comparative critique that looks at Norway or Denmark and says, well, these systems are more directly representative and more proportional. The very idea that we could even think to compare our government to Norway's is an example of how effective the Constitution is the united states is not like norway it's like india it's like it's like brazil and mexico except it's much better governed than those places it's a vast democracy that works so well that it could compare itself to denmark and the the the fact that we're able to do that is a function of the incredible sophistication let's not get crazy i don't ever want to compare anything we do to denmark yeah well look we're even better governed in denmark

this is legit it's a real question i really i've always wanted this i get that um they were really smart guys you know i was forced to read the federalist papers in college and so i get that they were smart but the idea that they were the architects of this system that works at this scale like at the scale that the united i mean the reason that we are not like norway is because we have norway here too it's up there somewhere close to where uh uh james lives and we have a little bit of mexico down there i mean we have everything and the idea that these do you think these guys had an idea that this country was going to be loud and fractious and noisy and that we needed a system that was going to be able to contain that and channel that

or do you think they just thought hey hey, listen, you put people in a room together, no matter what their background is, they're going to fight. Sometimes the most bitter, the bitterest arguments are between family members. So this works at scale. It works when we have 13 colonies. It works when we have a population of 1 million. We have two big cities, and it works when we have you know 13 colonies works when we have a population of 1 million we have two big cities and it works when we have 27 big cities is that did they know

well i certainly think they didn't know quite how the united states would grow i think i think they didn't have a conception of what it could be in the 21st century but i do think a number of them had a very strong sense that the united states was destined do think a number of them had a very strong sense that the United States was destined to be a great world power, had a real sense that it was going to grow geographically and demographically. You know, Alexander Hamilton talks about the future of the country in a way that is extraordinarily modern and far-seeing. They didn't know exactly how, but I think they were building for durability and growth, and they had a sense that politics is always contentious, that it is about fighting,

and therefore the system has to be built to contain tensions but also facilitate constructive fighting. And that is an insight that has served us very well it's it's remained true and you know the united states i mean americans i think we always exaggerate our internal differences we say well we used to be you know this one homogenous society back then but now we're so diverse and different i think we're kind of wrong on both ends of that the the america of the late 18th century was quite divided and fractious and felt diverse to itself. And the America of the 21st century, I mean, look, if you spend a few weeks abroad and then run into an American somewhere, you know that person's an American in five seconds from across the room.

We have a lot in common. And it's not only when we agree with each other or when we're from the same place. There is absolutely such a thing in the world as the American character. And in a lot of ways, it's a function of our constitutional system and of our political culture. As you evolve, what comes next? So there's an influential theory out there that says, you know, American history goes in these kind of cycles. And when you're at the end, I feel like we're in one of these, like at the end of the ancient regime, the way things have run for a while, decades, comes to an end. They say you get these

years of closely divided elections where nothing happens. People get more and more frustrated. Then some kind of crisis occurs and we kind of break through that and then a whole new system comes into existence. So they say Reagan was like that, FDR was like that, Lincoln and Jefferson going back. Those are the major points. Don't you feel like we're in that now? And if that's true, what's going to replace this kind of close elections, bitter divisions, polarization, which what you see at the end of a cycle, what's the next one going to look like? Yeah, I think that's right. You know, Samuel Huntington wrote a book in the early 80s called The Promise of Disharmony, which is an amazing book, really underappreciated. And he describes

these kinds of cycles, and he even said that we would be in one in this period in the second decade of the 21st century. And oftentimes what characterizes these moments, like you say, is that there's not an obvious majority party in American political life. So most of the time, if you look in on the United States, there's a majority party that's holding together a complicated coalition. There's a minority party that's trying to broaden its coalition. They're both engaged in coalition building. And those phases kind of run out, and you reach a point where neither party is engaged in coalition building, and our politics just feels totally dysfunctional. I think that's actually a great description of this moment.

Neither party is engaged in coalition building. If you step back from them, they're not really trying to grow. They're trying to mobilize their existing base of voters. And this creates an enormous opportunity for political insight and political talent to build a real majority. I think a lot of politicians in this moment think there can't be a majority again. You know, even though they lived through a period, look, Ronald Reagan won 49 states in 1984. Nobody imagines that's achievable now. But a majority is absolutely achievable now. So maybe something like a conservative, populist, working class party, isn't that what it feels like is coming? Yeah, I think both parties have an opportunity. I think

Republicans have a bigger opportunity. It's easier to imagine Republicans being that party. But yeah, it would be the popular party, the party that speaks for the people in a kind of up-down politics as much as left-right. You know, the traditional divide in democracy is the few and the many. And left-right is a kind of modern addition onto that. But the few and the many is still the most powerful force in the life of a democracy. And our politics increasingly feels like a party of the elite and a party of the people that obviously can be very unhealthy. And I think we're seeing it as unhealthy, both the elitism and the populism we have now are unhealthy. But to build a majority that somehow cuts across some of the familiar categories of the phase of our

politics that's ending. And I'm not talking about 80%, but 60%. That's a big majority in American politics. I absolutely think that is achievable. And that's what the next phase looks like. I just want to say I want to be with the elites because they all have the best stuff. But when the revolution comes, I'm switching. I'm going with Rob. Wherever Rob goes, I'm going with him. Yeah, I'm a survivor, John. I'm going to push you off my bandwagon so fast. Oh, yeah. Everybody, get this guy.

Well, we could get the entire country, 49 states at least, if we agreed with John Yoo that the McRib should be available all year round, in addition to the shamrock shake or some other popular menu items, that being John's thing, right? Barring that, it's hard to see what issue it'll be, but we may find out. In the meantime, we recommend that everybody, since we are in this period of twixt constitutional adherence at a national and social, personal level. Read his book. The book is called American Covenant, How the Constitution Unified Our Nation and Could Again. Yvonne Levin, thanks so much for joining us today. Fascinating conversation. We could go on and on and on about it. And, you know, we'll talk to you maybe before the next book. What is the next book, by the way? Thank you very much. I appreciate it i appreciate it though i have to say i don't appreciate that question because it's always a very hard question to answer right after writing this book but uh time will tell well you know be

in the newspaper business here we're all about the list so i'd say uh the you know the uh the bill of rights pick five and uh five favorite right five hottest rights in the time right bill of rights there you go quartering no quartering good for clicks thank you thank you thank you so much thanks you all you know i yes top down plebes versus the patricians all the rest of it um you know but thanks to marx we have a we have elites who are collectivists that that that's the strange thing yeah right right right prefer the old prefer the old days when the elites would just simply leave the peasants to be in their fields and do what they want and die as long as they pay their taxes and give their farthings and leaves to the king. But no, we've got to have this collective identity thanks to our betters in, oh, you know, Davos, WEF, all those places, all those crazy words that we throw out there to say. And I don't believe that the WEF is actually anything more than just a sort of

amusing collection of supervillains who just plot, who just tell you their stories out in the open. The thing is that they always tell their plans about owning nothing in the 15-minute city and, you know, eating the bugs, living in the pods. They always say these plans before they actually have James Bond strapped into the laser castration machine. Yeah, the thing about it you're supposed to reveal all that stuff when you got the guy where you want him and then you tell but no they're out there in the in in the open telling us everything in ricochet the other day we were having a conversation about 15 minute

cities i know rob lives in one i practically do and do. And the reason that I wanted to push back against people throwing 15-minute cities out there, maybe we talked about this before, I can't remember, has to do with that it's not a bad idea. It really isn't. To design places where you can get around and you can walk and you can get your groceries and you can go to a cafe and a bar and a drugstore within 15 minutes without having to get in your car. The problem is twofold. One, they use it as a means to bash the paradigm that a lot of people have happily adapted to, which is the suburbs. People are completely content to live in the suburbs for a variety of reasons. reasons and two you have to be very very careful that it doesn't turn into a mechanism whereby

this good idea suffused with its moral purity becomes a way of the state extracting more resources from you by putting you know well you you can drive out of your 15-minute city elsewhere if you want but you're going to pay a congestion charge stuff like that yeah it bothers me how so many things that we that that in your heart and in your head you agree with stewardship of the environment uh you know end of the you know the blight visual blight of billboards etc all of these things they've got an aspect to it that yeah it's good for all of us if we do this but but it becomes, A, dogmatic. It becomes, B, a stalking horse for another ideology. C, it inevitably leads to the diminution of your freedom.

And that's one of those crazy words that when you start throwing around the younger generation, it starts to roll their eyes. Do you know what word is now making the rounds as being sort of sus to the young? You guys have any idea? I mean, freedom and liberty. We know that that's what crazy people with red hats say what's a word that also gets their hackles up abundance abundance yeah that's right i believe that you know we there's no abundance it's just shortages of everything we shouldn't have no we well we

shouldn't have about first of all we don't have abundance though because we're in a post-capitalist hell but we shouldn't have abundance yeah i mean that's a philosophical question that they have it's a philosophical argument but it's it is i mean it it is absolutely the the end product of everything that we've been teaching them which is that there's shortages so and that there's less and that the future is going to be um filled with challenges like the ocean's on fire you know what abundance means abundance means when you turn the light switch on there's light

it means when you turn the hot water on there's hot that's what abundance means actually we i mean the things that we take for granted are symbols of tremendous abundance and we need it also means that if you do well right then that isn't zero sum that i could do well too right we believe that the country grows and the economy grows and the rising tide lifts all boats and they roll their eyes at that but it is in fact demonstrably unquestionably quantified quantifiably the truth right well we all rob we agree that is not enough it is not enough for you and i to do well john you must do poorly poorly. Yeah, that's why I agree with that. Can I throw in one other idea, James, just trying to draw from what's going on in the academy, crazy stuff I read. But there's one big stream of

thought going into conservatives asking, why do we have cities at all? Now that we're decentralizing, now they have work from home, now that our economy is based on the production of information, why do we need cities? Why do we all need to live together in these closely compacted, dense places with expensive housing prices? So here's the alternate world. And I thought Yuval was going to mention this, but he didn't, which was the Constitution actually is great for decentralization. It's a great government for what Rob was saying, a large country with people all spread out and diverse communities. And you think about the government we have now, you think about the cities we have now that you're talking about, James, that's mass production, factory-style economics and society. That's not the way things are organized anymore.

Maybe that's why, I think that's behind what you're talking about james about oh these 15 minute cities and suburbs that's actually a way station to going back to something that might look in organization more like the 18th century again which is where rob really wants to live sure in a village the villages are the most interesting places but i mean the twin parts of the american experience are just these are human nature right on the one hand you want space i want my space that's one of the things that people said when they left the dirty stinking city and they went out to the suburbs the first time i mean i'm talking about like the 30s and 40s and 50s right and like look at i had i had a lawn i got a front yard i got all this

stuff and that is incredibly powerful that's a great and that's why people left europe too right yeah because in europe the source of wealth was just having land and then some people didn't want to some people wanted to be in the city especially when they're young they want to be with other young people they wanted to be in this kind of crazy they were willing to put up with it and there's these two characters there's this you know there's the urban dweller and then there's the suburban choice and then there's another human person that's always there and that's the hoa head right that's the hoa busybody and that is more than more i think than any other image is what people think about when they think about the sort of the progressive left like this these are they're they're going to walk around the neighborhood

and write you a note because they don't like your curtains or they don't like this or you put a pump or you have a planter that's not the right color and I think that is also very human like humans like to do that we like to boss each other around but that is also part of this kind of like small-minded limited mentality that if you have this thing we're all gonna suffer you look like you're having fun that's not good um and you know unfortunately culturally i think i think we're probably on the i hope we're on the downside of that cycle and we're coming back up to the what i think the normal american view which is go do you do you uh but as quietly as you possibly can do it because i'm trying to get you know some sleep so rob um you're happy if

kamala harris is president you just don't want her to be head of the city council of your town well i i actually think that when americans vote you know, if you look at the best, the probably the most interesting and see change political changes in my lifetime happened when Bill Clinton was president and the Republicans took the House and they took the Senate. And that's when we got welfare reform. And that's when we got actually institutional congressional reform in a major way i mean it now seems like a cliche but the newt gingrich's contract with america was a radically radically influential and successful document and um you know american people kind of like this gridlock stuff but they also they do like sticking it to the guy at the top and i you know if kamala harris, which would not be surprising, I don't think that the conservative movement's dead. I don't think the conservative reforms are dead. I think they might be reinvigorated.

Reinvigorated, yeah. I've never heard that line before. Yeah, we should lose this election because then people will get really good and hard. They'll get really good and hard and they'll realize that. I know I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm just saying that it's possible. The problem with both sides is they think it's inconceivable that they're going to lose either now or in the future. And they think that once you vote for you, once you voted for my guy for president, whether it's Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, if forever, you're just all the things are going to be fixed and you're never going to have any trouble at all and that's ultimately just go back to the constitution that's the problem with our interpreting the constitution which people think of it interpret it only as this document that keeps them from getting what they want

when in fact it's a document that keeps you from getting what you want and that's kind of how it's supposed to work right it restricts you and not me. That's primarily what it does. So, you know, we should be prepared. Maybe we'll win. Maybe the conservatives will win in 2024. Maybe they'll lose. But they are going to lose elections in the future. So how do you prepare for that?

I don't know. I just do know that if we have a massive attack on israel by iran in the next week or so i would really be keen to know who's calling the shots here something tells me it ought to be the guy who's called the president but um i'm wondering if this is going to be an opportunity for them to show calvin ayers's foreign policy six-dimensional chops chest chops yeah and have her respond have her in charge of what the American reaction to this is going to be. Or Biden will just get on the wrong plane again and be whisked off to some place and

we'll never see him again. I don't know. I don't know. I'd like a little bit more clarity at the top. However, it is the top of the hour, end of the show. Usually we tell you right now where there are going to be meetups around the country, but you know what? You can go and read that at Ricochet.

You should go and read that at Ricochet along with everything else. And you should join as well because on the member feed where all kinds of friendships are made and every single discussion and object of controversy and art and music and the rest of it, you'll find it there. You can hear me in my podcast, The Diner, which is available on saturday i think we're talking about dogs and renaming streets two vital crackling topics you want to do stop the presses it's the same same subject yeah stop the presses oh that's another whole issue maybe i'll get to name the streets after dogs yeah why didn't that occur to me well you know what i'm gonna rip it up i back. I'm going to do the, you call me as we call it and,

and redo the show. Anyway, I could totally see you living on poodle street. Come on. Poodle street. Yeah. Okay. Well,

I'm off. I really, it really is. Yeah. Well, I think they have to have more hair than I actually do. So, well, it's better than pug place.

John, Rob, it's been a pleasure. We'll see you both next week, perhaps. And we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Next week. Bye, guys. Thanks for having me. Thanks, John. Excellent, as always.

Absolutely so. Ricochet. Join the conversation.