While writing my column this week, I was reminded of Benjamin Franklin’s famous quip about the outcome of the 1787 constitutional convention in Philadelphia. As the story goes, Franklin was leaving the hall after signing the Constitution when he approached by Elizabeth Powel, a close friend of George Washington’s. She asked whether the delegates had decided on a monarchy or a republic.
“A republic,” Franklin replied, “if you can keep it.”
This anecdote comes to us by way of James McHenry, a delegate from Maryland who later served as the United States’ third secretary of war. It was recorded in “The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787” and has had remarkable staying power in the decades and centuries since it entered popular memory.
The reason, I think, is that it captures better than almost anything else the apprehension and uncertainty that marked the first decade of the American republic.
Somewhat lost to history in our memory and mythology of the founding fathers is the fact that their optimism regarding their capacity to make the world anew was tempered by a deep pessimism born of past precedent and their own experiences as statesmen and politicians.
The framers were more than aware of the fragile and short-lived nature of republican government. “It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy,” Alexander Hamilton observed in Federalist No. 9, voicing the conventional wisdom of many of his peers. “If they exhibit occasional calms, these only serve as short-lived contrast to the furious storms that are to succeed.”
Accordingly, their own choices were informed by the examples of the past. They would avoid the direct democracy of Athens in favor of a system of representation; they would blend representation with the aristocratic elements of the Roman republic; and they would create a new office, the presidency, that would tether the executive power to the rule of law.
The product of human failings and human frailties, despotism could not help but lurk around every corner. The best the framers could do was to design their new government to be as resilient as it could be in the face of ambition and the will to power.
But, of course, there was no guarantee that it would work.
There is a wonderful book by the political scientist Dennis C. Rasmussen, titled “Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America’s Founders,” that both captures and explains the pessimism of the revolutionary generation.
George Washington, for instance, feared that the nation would be pulled apart by faction and partisanship. “I have, for sometime past, viewed the political concerns of the United States with an anxious, and painful eye,” wrote Washington near the end of his life in a letter to none other than the aforementioned McHenry. “They appear to me, to be moving by hasty strides to some awful crisis; but in what they will result — that Being, who sees, foresees, and directs all things, alone can tell.”
Hamilton, who devoted his life in politics to building a strong national government, feared that the political system was too weak to secure a strong future for the nation. “Truly, My dear Sir, the prospects of our Country are not brilliant,” he wrote to Rufus King after Thomas Jefferson took office, complaining that the new president pushed a vision of “No army, no navy, no active commerce … as little government as possible.”
John Adams saw a lack of virtue among the people and feared that they would not be able to resist the temptations of a demagogue. “If there is any Thing Serious in this World, the Selfishness of our Countrymen is not only Serious but melancholy, foreboding ravages of Ambition and Avarice which never were exceeded on this Selfish Globe,” he wrote to his son, John Quincy Adams,. “You have seen much of it. I have seen more.…The distemper in our Nation is so general, and so certainly incurable.”
Interestingly, the founding father who lived longest into the 19th century, James Madison, retained a great deal more optimism about the future of the American Republic. “A Government like ours has so many safety valves, giving vent to overheated passions,” he wrote to the Marquis de Lafayette, commenting on the Missouri crisis, “that it carries within itself a relief against the infirmities from which the best of human Institutions cannot be exempt.”
To take the pessimism of the founders seriously — to really engage with their fears — is to see the extent to which they weren’t all wrong.
Washington’s warnings about the dangers of faction are, these days, well taken, especially as we observe in real time the ways that narrow political allegiance and fear of party censure can supersede a lawmaker’s commitment to anything broader than immediate partisan interest. How might Republicans in Congress deal with the illegal, unconstitutional and anticonstitutional actions of the White House if they weren’t so concerned with winning the next primary or raising money for the next campaign?
We can both recognize that modern democracy is inconceivable without the political party — it is a necessary coordinating institution — while also giving due credit to Washington who could see, even in those early years, the dangers that factional behavior and blind partisanship could pose to even a well-ordered political system.
Adams’s warnings about the consequences of a lack of virtue land especially hard in light of the rampant dishonesty that almost defines American politics at this moment in time. This isn’t the more ordinary fudging of truth that attends politics in most places and at most times; no, this is the kind of blatant and unapologetic lying that degrades public life itself. This is going before the American people and telling them things you know are not true to gain power, and then using that power to pursue your own interests against the public good.
Or look at the extent to which too many Americans indulge the worst forms of conspiratorial thinking, who indulge the worst fantasies about their political opponents and believe anything they’re told, as long as it flatters their prejudices and preconceptions about people on the other side of a political or cultural divide. This, too, is a rejection of civic virtue, of the good faith and good will that we ought to show our fellow citizens because we are not engaged in a winner-take-all struggle as much as we are a collective effort to live together as peacefully as we can.
Hamilton’s fears about anarchy were mostly about his disdain for democracy. And yet, as we bear witness to an aggressive attempt to dismantle the federal bureaucracy, we may find that he was right about the dangers of a weak state for the peace and security of the nation.
Against all of this, there is Madison’s optimism. And I have to say that I am inclined by disposition to stand with Madison.
Many groups of Americans — especially those who, because of race or religion, have found themselves outside the so-called mainstream — have faced challenges far worse than those at hand. They have had to survive as second-class citizens under authoritarian rule, or as supposed enemy nationals confined to internment camps, or as dangerous radicals suppressed and surveilled by their government.
The United States, it suffices to say, has been far from benign toward many of its own citizens. But even in the face of real oppression, those Americans (and their allies) had the capacity to fight for equality, to fight for democracy, to fight to make this country so much more than what it is often content to be.
After surveying the many difficulties facing the country, Madison wrote, at the very end of his life, that he was “far however from desponding, of the great political experiment in the hands of the American people.” Madison had seen and experienced a lifetime’s worth of political turmoil. Through it all, however, the republic endured. And as his time on this earth came to a close, he still believed in the strength of the system he had helped to create.
I’m not so sure about the strength of that system. (It should be said that a generation after Madison’s death, his Constitution collapsed under the weight of the slave system that gave him his livelihood.) I’m a little more optimistic about the American people themselves. Democracy is our birthright — it’s part of who we are. At our best, we are jealous of our freedom and eager to expand our collective liberty for the sake of a more egalitarian society.
We have a would-be despot in the White House. But even with a rotting Constitution on the verge of crisis, this is still a Republic, and the people are still sovereign. The task, then, is to make this clear to those in power who would like to pretend otherwise.
What I Wrote
My column this week was on constitutional crises and this notion of “constitutional rot,” and how to think of the current situation in this country.
One thing the language of crisis captures, however, is the degree to which the American political system is under a tremendous amount of stress. And to the extent that this stress threatens the integrity of the constitutional order, it is because the American system is, and has been, in a profound state of disrepair. If we are in or approaching a constitutional crisis, it has been a long time coming.
And on this week’s episode of my podcast with John Ganz, we watched the 1997 political thriller “Conspiracy Thriller,” directed by Richard Donner.
Now Reading
Danielle M. Wenner on why Democrats must lead public opinion rather than follow it, for Liberal Currents.
Republicans and their centrist enablers have sold voters a bag of lies about what is in their interests across a range of issues from “free speech” to DEI programs to basic rights for trans people. Rather than taking voters’ preferences as an immutable fact to which they must always and only respond, Democrats must embrace the power that they have to help voters identify and understand what their interests are, and thus how they should perceive the impacts of this administration’s actions on their ability to pursue and achieve them. Just as importantly, they must also do the work to construct a positive alternative vision of what our nation can be and use their significant ideational power to show voters how and why a nation built around the values of freedom and democracy is better for them than one built on cruelty and fear.
Rebecca Solnit on how the language of victim blaming shapes our politics for her newsletter, Meditations in an Emergency.
There’s a term, coercive control, which describes such violence and sexual assault as part of a larger campaign of domination, which is why it was always about control, never about losing control. Blaming the victim is another tactic in a campaign of control and power, and it has often worked. It still does. Male violence was a given, and it was women who were supposed to alter their lives to avoid it and who were blamed not only by attackers but by society if we didn’t succeed.
Olufemi Taiwo on Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s war on D.E.I., for Slate.
If meritocracy is to be won in this country, we have to create the possibility for lasting change first. Accomplishing this task is directly at odds with “restoring” a mythic past. No matter how many times the president or his party use the word “meritocracy,” it is clear that the game rigged for the Kennedys and against the Bridgeses of this country is the America they want to return to “greatness.” And no matter how they phrase it, the case for that is meritless.
Vikram David Amar and Jason Mazzone on the birthright citizenship clause, for Verdict.
Just as Occam’s razor suggests that answers that are the simplest and that require the fewest assumptions are often the best in resolving disputes in the realm of philosophy, so too in the absence of compelling public legislative or other history, a constitutional interpretation that straightforwardly honors a provision’s textual emphasis on place of birth and actual amenability to regulation — and nothing more — is vastly superior to interpretations that require the imputation of the status, allegiance or ephemerality of a child’s parents, when the words of the document never mention anything at all about the parents or any of these concepts.
Lawrence B. Glickman on Social Security, for Boston Review.
As the opposition to MAGA struggles to find its footing — especially, it seems, within the leadership of the Democratic Party — recalling FDR’s description of the danger posed by these “new mercenaries” might help guide the way. To him, the best way to combat that danger was simple: a popular politics of public goods, social insurance, and life-saving regulation, one in accordance with the overwhelming support for Social Security. Then as now, such a politics not only challenges the view, articulated most recently by Trump and Musk, that government expenditures — except those that enrich elites — are a racket. It also underlines how the kind of public goods that only government can provide are not only morally just and enriching, but, as FDR argued, essential in the “war for the survival of democracy.”
Photo of the Week
Speaking of Madison, I went to the annual day of horse racing at Montpelier, his Virginia home, late last year and had a great time. Here is a photo from the excursion, taken on my Olympus Pen FV half-frame camera from 1970.
Now Eating: Lentils Diavolo
I was recently extolling the virtues of legumes, and so with that in mind, here’s a recipe from New York Times Cooking for an easy and satisfying lentil dish that you can put together with pantry ingredients. Once finished, you should garnish with fresh lemon and parsley and serve with toast or pasta or farro or whatever else you might like.
Ingredients
-
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
-
1 jalapeño, halved, seeded if desired, and finely chopped
-
6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
-
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
-
1 teaspoon black pepper
-
½ teaspoon red-pepper flakes
-
¼ cup tomato paste
-
1 ½ cups brown or green lentils
-
1 teaspoon kosher salt
Directions
Heat the oil in a medium saucepan or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the jalapeño, garlic, paprika, black pepper and red-pepper flakes and cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are softened, about 3 minutes. Add the tomato paste and cook, stirring constantly, for 30 seconds.
Add the lentils, and cover with 1½ inches of water. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat, then lower to a gentle simmer and cook until the lentils are soft and the water has mostly evaporated, 30 to 35 minutes. If they are looking dry at any point, add a little hot water. Season with the salt and serve.
Thank you for being a subscriber
Read past editions of the newsletter here.
If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.
Have feedback? Send me a note at [email protected].
You can also follow me on Twitter (@jbouie), Instagram and TikTok.
The post The Founders Were Afraid for the Country, Too appeared first on New York Times.
