The pillar and please speak clearly into the microphone as we are recording it today and cspan, booktv is here as well. Following q a we will have assigning here at this table. If you havent already purchased your books we have plenty at the front of the store at the registers. Tonight am very excited to welcome yuval levin to politics pros celebrating his newest book a time to build. From family and community to congress and the campus how recommitting to our institutions can revive the american dream. As the nation faces increasing divisiveness fueled by artisan politics culture wars and populace on both sides levine argues that rather than trying to tear down existing institutional frameworks we should be looking to them as sources of strength and support. Through a time to build he shows her Current Crisis isnt completely due to the presence of an oppressive force but to the absence of uniting forces and here to commit ourselves to renewing the vitality of institutions ranging from family and schools to churches and the military. To renew our ties to each other. He is the founder Founding Editor of National Affairs director of social culture ab American Enterprise institute. Contributing editor of National Review cofounder and Senior Editor of the new atlantis and his offered the fractured republic in the great debate. His essays and articles have appeared in numerous publications including the new york times, the washington post, the wall street journal among many others. Please join me in welcoming to politics and prose, yuval levin. [applause] thank you very much. Thank you i appreciate the welcome. I appreciate you being here on a friday night. Im excited to chat a little bit about this book and what it might say to a moment that takes a little work to understand. This is a book about some of whats gone wrong in our country in recent years and what we can do about it. Something has gone wrong i think is reasonably clear but exactly what it is actually isnt as clear as we sometimes think or imagine or pretend. We americans are in a sense living through social crisis. We can see that in everything from vicious partisan polarization to rapid cultural resentments and upsurge of isolation, alienation, despair that has sent suicide rates climbing and driven epidemic of opioid use in recent years these are deep dysfunctions and seemingly different parts of our society. They seem to have common roots and yet its not easy to say what exactly those roots are. Part of the crisis one of the symptoms is that we cant quite seem to get a handle on what that is. Traditional economic concerns dont really cut it as explanations. We certainly weve actually been living through one of the longest economic expansions moderate errors its not that some americans arent suffering economically but the problems we have on that front dont really add up to the enormous crisis we are going to. Other familiar kinds of measures of wellbeing dont offer obvious explanations either. Americans are as healthy and safe as was ever been. He might say what we complaining about . Some people argue that there actually just isnt anything to complain about or that the frustration and anxiety that seems to overwhelm us now are rooted in some kind of imaginary grievances driven by her politics. That they themselves might be the problem. Stephen pickard of harvard emma for example, takes these kinds of complaints to be what he described as irritable gestures of selfindulgence and gratitude. In a recent book he looks over mountains of data on wealth and health and safety and choice and he concludes the popular complaints on all side of our politics are just detached from reality. He said they are dangerous too. Indiscriminate pessimism can lead to fatalism, wondering why we should throw time and money at a hopeless cause and can lead to radicalism cause to smash the machine or drain the swamp or empower charismatic tyrants. Surely although these kinds of responses are understandable in part, public frustration is not just some kind of selfdelusion, especially frustration that runs this deep thats revealed itself in such a broad range of symptoms. Pinkerton happy data are not wrong exactly and neither are the encouraging Economic Indicators but if these dont explain raining sentiments of our time we should ask ourselves what kind of indicators might be ignoring. Our usual measures of wealth and health and personal freedom dont explain the problem because those familiar indicators as important as they are to understanding our society are largely material an individual. They assess our wellbeing on our own but none of us can really experience wellbeing on our own. Its exactly in the joints of society at the junctures of individual that the trouble really shows itself. One way to put that point is that many of our struggles seem rooted in relational problems. Loneliness and isolation, mistrust, suspicion, alienation, polarization, these are the kinds of problems we have now and they are failures of social reality. They fall into a blind spot for our very individualist culture. How do we explain the crisis of connectedness like this . Some people argue the trouble is fundamentally philosophical, metaphysical, that liberalism is failed because it fails to offer us sufficient vocabulary or architecture for solidarity. Other people say there are traditional measures of growth and prosperity might look fine our problem is still economic in a deeper sense, is socioeconomic. They say contemporary capitalism creates levels of inequality that make it impossible for people to feel like equal parts of a larger whole or to believe in legitimacy of our Political Economic order. Other people suggest that external pressures like trade or immigration or internal pressures like racism or identity politics have lost us incapable of hanging together. There is some truth to all these things, surely, they all get something important right because they treat the human person as embedded in a larger hole whether metaphysical or moral or social economic and they see that whats wrong now has to do with the way in which we live out that embeddedness. I think they are still missing something crucial. When we think about our problems in these ways, we tend to imagine our society as a vast open space thats full of people having trouble linking hands. We talk about breaking down walls are building bridges or leveling the playing field, casting some kind of unifying narrative but there is a missing step between joining together and recovering the longing and trust and legitimacy. What we are missing although we too rarely put it this way is a structure, a shape for our social life the way to give purpose and concrete meaning and identity to the things we do together. If American Life is a big open space its not a space filled with individuals its a space filled with these structures of social life. Its a space filled with institution. We were too often failing to foster legitimacy and trust more than a failure of connection we confront failure of institutions. Institutions do a lot more than connect us and understanding our social crisis in terms of what they are and what they do and help us to see the crisis in a new light. Thats the understanding really that this book tries to advance. Whats an institution . It wont surprise you to learn that there are a lot of different academic definitions of the term. The book thing through a number of these but for our purposes let us suggest a general definition that draws together a lot of the Academic Work but looks toward the problems we confront in our society. I institutions i mean the durable forms of our common life the ships, the structures of what we do together. Some institutions over the organizations they have Something Like a corporate Form University or hospital or school or business civic association, these are all institutions they are technically legally formalized. Some institutions are durable forms of different kind maybe shaped by laws or norms will but without proper structure of the family for example is an institution. In some ways the first and foremost institution of every society. You talk about the institution of marriage or particular tradition the profession as an institution the rule of law itself is an institution. That there durable is essential an institution keeps its general shape over time so it shapes the realm of life in which it might be said to operate. It changes only very gradually and incrementally flash mobs dont count with institutions. Most important whats distinct about institution is its a form. In the deepest sense. A form is a structure, contour is the shape of the whole, the organization that speaks of its purpose and its logic, its function commits meaning, a social forum, an institution is not just a bunch of people. Its a bunch of people order together to achieve a purpose to pursue a goal to advance an ideal and that means that institutions are also by their nature, formative. They structure our interactions and as a result, they structure us. They shape our habits, our expectations, ultimately they shape our characters, these shape our souls. They help to form us and that formative role actually has a lot to do with how institutions relate to the social crisis we are living through now stop let me say a word about that. When we think about the role of institutions in American Life now, we might tend to think first in terms of her loss of trust or confidence in institutions. Take talk about that a lot is a trend we hear a lot about. Measures very easy to find in paint a very grim picture. Gallup has kept track of americans confidence in institutions for decades. In most cases started doing it in the early 1970s and continues to do it on a regular basis and the trend in those figures is unmistakable. From big business and banks and professions to the branches of federal government the news media, the academy, its found confidence in our institutions has been plummeting consistently. 60 of americans profess confidence in the Public Schools in the early 70s. About a third did last year. In 1975 a year after Richard Nixon dude resigned in disgrace 52 percent of americans expects confidence in the presidency. Last year 32 percent did. Gallup even found amazingly that 42 percent of the public had confidence in congress in the 1970s. Last year that figure was 12 percent and even that seems really high you have to wonder who are these people who say they have confidence in congress. The pattern holds for just about all the institutions that gallup asked about. The military is the only major exception and we think about that in the second. The overall trend is really unmistakable. The American Public is gone from extraordinary levels of confidence are major institutions to really striking levels of mistrust. What we actually mean when we say we dont trust institutions . I think the answer has a lot to do with what institutions actually are and do. It takes us back to the question of how they form us. Every Significant Institution carries out important task in society. Educating children or enforcing the law or serving the poor providing service making some products, meeting a need we have. It does that by establishing a structure and process a form for combining peoples efforts toward accomplishing that task. In the process, the institution also forms those people to carry out that task effectively and responsibly and reliably stop it shapes the people within it to be trustworthy. Thats what it means to trust in institution. We trust in institution when it seems to have been ethic that makes the people within it more trustworthy. We might trust a Political Institution when it takes seriously some kind of obligation to the Public Interest and forms the people in it to do the same. We trust the military because it values courage and honor and duty and carrying out the defense of the country and it clearly shapes people who do that too. We trust the business because it promises quality and integrity and meeting some need we have an seems to reward people when they deliver those. We trust a school because it builds a culture that makes its people devoted to learning and teaching and keeping kids happy and safe. We trust the journalistic institution, for example, because it has high standards of honesty and accuracy in reporting the news and that makes its people reliable. We lose faith in institution when we no longer believe it plays that kind of ethical reform in a row. There are plenty of his examples in our time but theres plenty of examples and in every time. It doesnt quite explain the distinctive loss of confidence in institutions in our own day. Another related but Different Institution can lose our trust doesnt even seem to see that kind of formation as its purpose. When the people in the institution no longer see it as a mold of their character and behavior but just as a platform for themselves to perform on to raise their profiles to be seen in societies in institution like that seems not to be worthy of our trust not because it does mean it seemed to seek it or desire it Something Like that has been happening and a lot of our american institutions. We dont become institutions as formative but performative when the presidency and congress are just stages for performative political outrage when University Becomes a venue for virtue singling on one side or another when journalism is indistinguishable from activism on one side or the other when the Church Becomes a political stage, they become a lot harder to trust because they are really asking for our trust or just asking for attention. In our time a lot of the most significant social and political and cultural and intellectual institutions in our country are in the process of going through this kind of transformation for multiplatform. The few exceptions, most notably the military the most unabashedly formative of our National Institution seem to prove that rule because theyre one of the few institutions we are losing faith. Many of the many truck novel institutions of the 21st century especially Virtual Institution of social media are inherently shaped has platforms. It would be strange to trust a platform and we generally dont. That change of attitude the declining expectation the institution should be formative of the people in them is at the heart of our loss of faith in institutions. Its intern at the heart of our broader social crisis because institutions understand is platforms rather than molds stages to perform on more than as means to form and shape our character are less able to offer the subjects of loyalty, source of legitimacy, waives the building usual trust. Examples of this kind of transformation for multiplatform are everywhere around us want to start looking for them. In many cases our institutions are being made into platforms not just for any performance but for a kind of performative virtue and performative outrage in that vast polarized culture war that so much of our society is living through. In one institution after another we find people who ought to think of themselves as insiders shaped by distinct purpose and integrity of the institution they are in instead functioning as outsiders displaying themselves building their own personal brand. This is obvious in politics because if theres any doubt the donald trump sees the presidency as a stage for performative outrage and himself as a performer acting on it rather than an executive acting in and through it. What exactly is he doing when he tweets his displeasure with something the department of justice has done . The department of Justice Works for him. If he had a sense of his job is shaped by an institutional contours he would direct the executive branch rather than complain about it. Maybe its a good thing he doesnt know he could do that but he could. The president normally would. The sense of his job is yet another stage for the Reality Television show that his life has been for so long. Is there any question at the same time that many members of congress of both parties now run for office last to be involved in legislative work and more to have a prominent platform in the culture wars to become more visible and cable news or talk radio to build a bigger social media following to use their elected office mostly as a platform to complain about the very institution they work so hard to enter. They see that as what their borders want so they are always performing for the core purpose and audience. Our two Major Political parties right now anything other than two platforms for performance they have a function other than displaying and elevating narcissists . Do we even remember what the goals of the Political Parties was to be at this point . We look beyond politics too, think about the professional a aprofession of journalism. It institutional strength is insistence on a formative integrity on a process of editing and verification that helps us to be sure that what it provides is reliable but today a lot of journalists constantly step outside of those institutional constraints and address the public directly on social media or cable news building their own personal brands on a platform rather than participating in the work of institutions. If you look on twitter right now you will find a lot of professional reporters effectively d professionalizing themselves. Journalists who are inclined to complain about how donald trump is behaved in office should consider whether trumps behavior relative to what the presidency is might be unnervingly similar to the behavior of a lot of leading political journalists relative to what journalism is. Both are playing out a kind of selfindulgent celebrity version of the real thing in both cases renders them less able to do their appropriate and very important work. You can see the same pattern in the academy in some ways, where it rather than serving the institutional purpose of the university which is to form some portion of the rising generations teaching and learning we find a lot of people in the university using the institution as a platform for virtue signaling or political cultural theatrics. This version of the same thing and some portions of American Religion were institutions that exist to form and transform souls are being used instead as a platform for political theater, for culture war drama so that the cachet of the church is used less to form those within it than to let them express themselves. We can see that pattern throughout American Life that the distortion of institutionalism amounts in practice to the great unasked question of our time. Given my role here, how should i behave . Thats what someone who takes institution involved with seriously would ask a lot of the trouble that faces are institutions now could be described as a widespread failure to ask that simple kind of question. Given my role here, how should i behave . As a president , as a member of congress, as a teacher, scientists, as a pastor or worker or parent or neighbor, what should i do here . I would bet that the people you most respect these days seem to ask that kind of question before they make important judgments and i would bet that the people drive you crazy who you think are really part of the problem in america seems somehow to constantly fail to ask that sort of question when they should so we always find ourselves thinking how could that person have done that given what their responsibilities are. Thats one way to understand the transformation of our expectations of institution which has so much to do with the broader set of problems we are dealing with. The transformation is left a lot of americans with a sense that our institutions cant be trusted that theyre not in the business of earning trust enough left us short of sources of belonging of legitimacy of social cohesion the problem doesnt simply explain the social crisis we are living through. But its one important factor behind the crisis we are particularly likely to miss because we are good at seeing what the institutions are grasping for. We only notice it when something is wrong. And something is wrong now. What can we do about it . Books books like this very often have a final chapter were having diagnosed some kind of complicated problem the author offers an agenda that turns out this moment calls for whatever this author is always wanted government to do and of course thats true, this moment calls for whatever ive ever wanted but this book doesnt have a chapter like that because dealing with this kind of problem requires to begin with a change of mindset, witnessing failures of responsibilities and so many of our institutions we are tempted to disposition to demolish and uproot and tempted to conclude that only outsiders can save us. Thats why so much of the energy of our politics is spent tearing down supposedly powerful establishments but we dont need more outsiders who pretend they are just critics with no power to act. We need more insiders. Institutionalists who will be earnest both in their efforts to build frameworks for common action and their acceptance of the duties that accompany power. The elites need especially to resist the urge to pretend they are outsiders as so many of them do so often now. Instead we should all try to embrace the responsibility that comes with whatever positions we do hold and we should ensure that obligations and restraints actually protect and empower us we need to inhabit the institutions we are each a part of to love them necessary to reform them to help them make them more lovely to other people we need to understand ourselves as formed by the institutions and act accordingly to ask ourselves in little moments of decision not just what do i want but what should i do here given my role or my position . Questions like these might seem like an awfully small response to the enormous kinds of problems i started with and there only a start but they are how we can begin to work toward a change of mindset and add up and make a difference if our leaders asked more often our politics would be improved a lot a professionals and many see builds office whale a bit more and be easier to trust their expertise to accept their claims to authorities if the people participate in all the institutions that we are part of try to think this way it would be easier to feel like we belong to something worthwhile. That sort of change of mindset is not a substitute for institutional reform. Its an essential prerequisite and we need Institutional Reforms. I dont think the problem to be solved is the people dont trust institutions enough. The problem to be solved is that our institutions are not trustworthy enough. Its also important to recognize there are some serious reasons to be careful and skeptical about institutions in American Society. There are a lot of ways they can be slow to change and hard to move more than that some institutions in our society can be literally oppressive. Determine solution allies racism is not a metaphor its a reality of American Life. The disposition to get strong institutions arose for serious reason. The arguments were transparency for individualism emerged as correctives to excessively rigid and imperious institutionalism. Words like that are serious they need to be heated but we have to see the populism and individualism and antiinstitutionalism also involves eeriest tradeoffs. Yet we cant do without them. Its true they can without functional institutions the week have no hope of indicating right. No institutions embodied suppression but they can also embody highest ideals. To defend institutions not to defend the status quo or the strong or the privileged. Functional institutions are most important for people who dont have power or privilege. Central to our acting on warmest sentiments too without them we grow isolated, alienated, disillusioned, we see that around us. This is the irony we confront now in American Life. The failures of our institutions have led us to demand that they be uprooted or demolished but we cant address those failures without renewing and rebuilding deals various institutions. We are right to be fed up with them sometimes what we need them to be respectable and legitimate, its right that antiinstitutionalism should guide our reactions against the excesses of institutional strength in American Life but our problems today are much more like excesses of institutional weakness and so they require recommitment and reform rather than resentment. Theres nothing weaker in American Life now then the establishment. I say recommitment and reform in that order because our attitude has to change first. This book does get into some structural and Institutional Reforms that help some particular institutions i talk about, congress and the Political Parties the professions the academy civic and religious life but the common denominator when it comes to those kinds of reforms is that the people in those institutions have to want them to happen. That means they have to first see that the ways they are now behaving is a big part of the problem. By making key institutions impossible to trust or contributing to a profound and destructive set of social dysfunctions. In one arena after another of our natural life we face this challenge of drawing alienated people back into her institutions. We can point to all kinds of complicated theories about how to build the trust acquired to accomplish that but the simplest way is for the people who inhabit our institutions for all of us to try to be more trustworthy and we each can work at this. We can give our institutional responsibilities more of our time and effort that we can give them more of our identity and selfconsciousness. We can judge ourselves by our standards, hold ourselves up to their ideals and take seriously forms of integrity. We can work to reform where they are failing to help them work better and be more worthy of trust and confidence stop begin your not for the formless economy of the independent contractor but for the rootedness in the responsibility of the member and the partner in the worker and the owner and the citizen. There is a word i think for attitudes like that, the word is devotion. Whats required of us now is devotion to the work we do together with other people in the service of a common aspiration and therefore devotion to the institutions we compose and inhabit. That kind of devotion does fall for sacrifice abcall for sack of rice and commitment for each of us to pledge ourselves to some institution we belong to to abandon ironic distance and dispatch analysis and jumping sometimes. That kind of devotion is not only necessary its actually very attractive just now we want objects of devotion we want something to commit to but we often dont see that we are looking for is right within our reach. Its easy to be fashionable rebels, its harder to remind ourselves why our core commitments are worthwhile. Thats the kind of case that a ajust a greater awareness of how integrity and trust and confidence belonging and meaning are established in our lives so a greater care about some habits we got into tend to cut us off from them. The habits of leftists feeling like theres no one we can trust except cynics and outsiders. Nothing we can do except register outrage. The fact is, our society has many functional institutions and could have many more if we devote ourselves to strengthening and reforming those we are a part of and will respond to needs and problems by building and rebuilding institutions rather than just expressing frustration from the outside. Thinking and speaking just a little differently about how we live together can make a bigger difference than we mightve a might imagine. Small steps like those are what make great changes possible. They are constructive so they build upon each other and turn us all into builders. That in the end is the character of the transformation we need now. The demolition crews have been allowed for too long to define the spirit of this era in American Life. Where we are headed is going to be up to the builders and the rebuilders. That is what each of us should seek. Thank you very much. [applause] gives you an overview of the book. Im happy to take questions and dig in a little bit deeper. There is a microphone appear. That was a great talk. Thank you. Am curious the extent to which you think this is specifically american problem. You kind of look beyond the u. S. In countries where this is more or less a problem what are the lessons we can learn from that . I think its certainly not uniquely american problem. If you think about the picture of the crisis i start with similar crisis are happening around the west. We identify authenticity with unmediated directness in a different way than many other people. Our culture is rooted in a kind of protestantism that doesnt trust mediating institutions that wants direct access weve always been attracted to outsiders and mavericks in our politics is always drawn that sort of figure. There was an exception to that in the middle of the term 20th century is coming out of Second World War and the depression and decades of mobilization we had very unusual confidence institutions. I think that was not the norm. There was an odd moment. It was an odd moment thats defined our sense of default. Living now in america that have so little trust in institutions feels to us much more broken, much more peculiar than it otherwise might. We still live with the norms that baby boomers grew up with our leaders still are those baby boomers. Were really testing how elderly arab leaders can get and it turns out pretty elderly. [laughter] i do think there is something distinct about this american approach to institutions that contribute to this problem that understanding it ought to be part of the solution but the breakdown of social trust and the rise of populism is certainly not just an american phenomenon. Thank you for your talk. We watched two different versions of reality play out in our politics recently. Your points on institutional failures in the performative nature of some actors are very well taken but i think you have it properly addressed another contributing factor there, and opposition to both expertise and experts. A longstanding pattern for example the declining trust in major new newspapers. I tell my students to read more than they watch and to avoid news thats engineered to give them a dopamine hit of righteousness. What would you do to address this problem . You are right. Your students are lucky to have that advice. I think this is very much connected to what i get at here and its very much part of the discussion in the book is this loss of trust and expertise. The question is, why do we trust experts . I think that has a lot to do with why we trust institutions which is to say we trust them when we think they are formed in a way that gives them Greater Authority than the average person on some particular subject. The Scientific Method gives the scientist more authority because its clear that before they Say Something theyve gone through a process that helps them figure out whats likely to be true and what isnt. We do trust that happens. Though even our trust in science has declined quite a bit in america. I think journalism strives for Something Like that to show it has a method that makes it worthy of our trust in the expertise in general works that way and that the transformation of a lot of the professional institutions that form experts that way into and some cases really stages for political performance but in any case the sense that the public has that all these institutions of authority no less than they say has a lot to do with the publics loss of trust is connected to the populism in our politics its also driven by a set of technological advances that gives everybody the misimpression they know as much as their doctor. People show up with all this stuff from the internet. We all now because of the kind of fragmentation of the media and of culture we imagine we have access to all the knowledge in the world and we dont need experts. Thats not actually what experts are. Experts dont just have knowledge they have experience they have a certain kind of prudence its built from the practice of applying knowledge in the world i think thats an idea that our culture just doesnt want to hear. You can see it in politics, thus the lure of the outsider. Politics actually requires some knowledge and experience. You wouldnt think so now. Would people run for office they proclaim how little experience they have. They take pride in theyve never done this before. Im not sure thats really a great way to prove he could be president. I think this pattern is a great deal to do with what i try to get which is the sense in which our idea that institutions exist to form people, to give them a certain shape in the life of a society is a way to make them trustworthy and make those individuals trustworthy. We still want expertise at some level. You dont hear from your surgeon, its kind of average. Its not great news. You want to hear that this is somebody who knows what they are doing and can prove it. And a lot of our public life we dont admit to ourselves that that kind of expertise is valued. I think thats part of this cultural picture. Thank you very much for the presentation. I enjoy it a lot. I think it certainly gave me a lot to think about. Your most recent comments i think have a lot to do with my question, maybe answering the question. One of the things you said was you wanted to include the professions in among institutions and your comments about doctors and medicine and so forth were along those lines. What im not clear about though is whether it sounds like the loss of faith in professions as institutions in your mind is true for people from the outside of those but i wonder i dont get the sense that from within side the Scientific Community or inside the medical community for that matter or inside the Engineering Community for that matter that there is confidence in their own institution. I think its hard to sustain that confidence when the public doesnt trust you. I would actually say that a lot of what we think of as the core professions there is a sense that the educational institutions and the institutions of practice that really give you a place in the profession have lost some of their authority and people do look for shortcuts, look for ways to gain prominence public profile more than to work their way through the kind of normal steps involved in gaining expertise. I dont think its collapsed its different from one institution to another. Medicine some level you actually have to know some particular things in order to practice medicine. You cant really just pretend to know them. I do think that there is a way in which the larger societys loss of trust in these institutions is connected to a decline in confidence. Not just confidence but satisfaction people in our major professions now are much less happy with their professional lives and you can see why because the larger public doesnt value you and the way it valued your profession a generation ago then it does become much harder to justify to yourself the kind of commitment necessary to become an expert and rise in the field. You see that in some places more than others. Its not the same everywhere. I think you see it in the legal world, you see it certainly in journalism, which is a profession especially subject to these pressures and forces. I found myself agreeing with your analysis almost entirely. Thats great to hear. I like to push you more toward specific policies because my concern, i look this and see people at the American Enterprise institute in think tanks and those who are so inclined and intentional, we are here your message and maybe try but the mast vast majority of americans, this is almost speaking a foreign language. Just wondering what you think about policies such as franchise voting and universal income and other reforms designed to bring people together. I appreciate that. Im sure i agree, it doesnt speak to most in some ways, the sense that its harder now to find people to trust is a problem for everyone, not just people in washington for a certain level of education. So trying to diagnose that in terms that relate to people experience could apply more than that but i agree, they have to take the form of Institutional Reforms. The institution is broken, congress is really the broken institution. Whatever you think of donald trump, i could spend it is a much bigger problem. Various complaints we have of the branches of government are largely functions of various failures of the legislature to take that responsibility seriously and reform the congress that encourage its members to think of themselves as insiders, outsiders in think of themselves as legislatures, not performers would have to look like changes to the budget process the Committee System and they invest in people more than the actual work of the institution. We cant replace now for most members take one big voting here on a big budget bill that had nothing to do with creating the Leadership Office midnight before the government shuts down and the structure of the work of congress had a lot to do with that. There are reforms that could change that. There are ways that transparency has gone too far in congress, there are no quiet spaces for members to talk to one another. The unprotected space is the Leadership Offices, midnight before the government shuts down. Those of the places the work gets done. Cspan is a god spend the has to be some places for members to bargain and deal with each other. Theres no such thing as bargaining and public abc people bargaining in public, youre watching a show, you are not walking to the real work of the legislature. Congress has be much more selfconscious about the way it structures its work. It can be done from members are very dissatisfied, the quality of life is pretty far. They dont behave like they could but they could. I think younger members in particular and both parties now, they dont even know what they are not doing. They didnt see congress function. The last real bipartisan bill, or say happened in the early bush years, i was a long time ago now. Congress hasnt really felt itself functioning and quite a while now. Thus the institution that makes its own rules and constraints them. If understood these terms, i think you have incentive to do that. Part of the reason to write a book like this, is to surface these problems in these terms because its not how we tend to see them. It points in the opposite direction from how we tend to see them. Rather than tear them down from the establish is strong, we need to build things things up. We need functional institutions. Right now, we just dont have that. I have two questions. Thank you for your presentations, your making a wonderful contribution to the discussion and issues. The first part is from what i gather from your presentation, youre asking for a new attitude and a change of mindset. What would it take for us quarterly for that to really get launched in addition more than just you are fighting this great book getting us to read it but at least by. Im off right. The second part is, the other end, with the reform part, what kind of structure the part of the problem isnt it has to do with the way we organize our society and that we are organized, our institutions have been handed down to us from kind of a cultural industrial but now we are in a digital age. The structures, the hierarchies we created that worked for them then dont work now. Weve undermined how we used to be organized by the personal connections and community and the way the personal relationships, or kind of Structural Reforms can you think of that might help restore personal connections and things that restore a kind of order so the organizations are just different. Great questions in the sense that they are impossible, those are the best questions. But they are related. If one thing you ask is how do we start to change attitudes . I think the only answer to that is to articulate for ourselves the problem in a particular way that causes us to think of our everyday decisions a little differently. I dont think we can really do much better than that. I can be a very powerful way to change. I dont think this can be really a pop down change. Ultimately, the trouble with the need for institutional reform, it has to come from within. They are now empowered by the way things work. You have to want them to change. Thats hard to get to. There has to be a demand for so there has to be a sense of this is the kind of change of attitude we need. We should do what we can. If you can write a book, maybe you should write a book but if you work in an institution that could stand this kind of change, i think it is important to speak up for in these terms. At the same time, when you ask what kind of reforms might be possible . I think the way you put it is valuable. American life has changed in dramatic ways over the years and weve seen big changes in our culture and society before. Some of our constitutions have proven durable in the face of those kinds of changes and some have not. I think whats troubling at this moment is that we havent seen a response to it in the form of new Institution Building. The argument making is not just restore and recover what we have but to respond to novel problems with new institutions. Think about the last time our country went through a period of intense dynamic change, at the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century were we had some of the problems in some ways, dramatic economic change, growth in the scale and scope of the economy, massive waves of immigration, we responded to those with Institution Building. What we think of now, on the one hand is the Progressive Movement but you can think about also as the emergent of a set of both bottomup and topdown institutions in American Society to deal with really new problems. I think i spoke to a kind of tendency in American Life to respond to problems by filling institutions. It isnt american testing. The 1830s, he wrote a letter to his father, if you get for americans together, they will elect a treasurer. That is one way to understand our National Character but i think we lost a little bit of that tendency. You see a problem and respond by organize around it because we have all these ways now to express our satisfaction and be inclined to expressive forms of response rather than to structural organizations. We think by just singling on facebook that we agree with that guy, weve done something about the problem. Saying on facebook that you are on the track, thats not doing anything at all. Very often its a way of avoiding doing something. In some ways, its even worse because the forms of reaction that twitter and other forms of social media encourage, lead us to respond to problems in a kind of confrontational way rather than thinking about how to build around them. I would say part of what we need is a recovery of a kind of Institution Building instinct and the only contributions i can make to that is to try to articulate that as a need and help people see that when they face a problem, maybe thats one way to think about it. Thank you for your talk. I have good news, given the context of this evening. I worked on a Research Program in progress and theres a whole committee rented a year ago to update and modernize institutions, six democrats and six republicans, its run in a voluntary and participatory way. I got all the hearings, i work very closely with them. They all ask questions and they all contribute, its a unified staff. The staff all Work Together all the time. Just three weeks ago, they introduced a bill based on a set of i think 29 recommendations over the last year that came out of committees that legislation to reform the institution. Its huge because it takes into account building infrastructure, bringing back the deliberative process and all of those things. Like devolving power back up to the committee and allowing them more chances to lead in the process. I think relating to the other comments, congress is down to 3. We see the hearings like benghazi and impeachment but its really not, he stopped doing that. Its now putting itself at 1980 levels. So for think that ive really noticed a lot, i would love for your comments on this, the problem with data and digital is that it has westernized transparency. Every public place you can imagine has been organized at this time. People want to watch, you can watch all of them. They are tremendous and they bring in a lot of people working on it. They have ways to curate incoming, we love to stand by the way but we need Something Like shes gun channel four, which is, it doesnt exist at this time but it would be far more curated and local and create a voice that talks to congress on its calendar like its committees of jurisdiction, not all members can care about that. It seems that it has to be some kind of real fundamental coming to terms with the democratization of data, its not serving democracy right now. Its this free market model and must we come to terms with like regulated capitalism is going, thats another mass institutional set of changes that we need, for you to talk about that. Ive received a lot of pure memos on the other side. Thank you for that. Ive been on the committee, too, theres a twin committee of the science association, a member of recovering political scientist myself, weve offered some recommendations to the House Reform Committee and theyve taken some of those. I think the work they are doing is enormously important, i would say at the core of it, that is a question that needs to be asked in a more explicit way, which is really what is the purpose of congress . I think are two answers to that question, they are in opposite directions going in both directions at the same time. On the one hand, you can say congress is like the purpose of the european parliament, which is into empower the majorities of the public tips away their power. The other, the purpose of congress is to compel accommodation among different groups and factions in america like forced compromise. I think thats the original purpose of congress. It is absolutely essential and American National legislature decidedly not the european government. It is intended to force people with differences to come to some agreement. Congress has become very bad at this because implicitly, both parties now wanted to function like european parliament. When they have the majority, they want to say we should do everything we want to do, yet whatever we cant push there, thank you visit. The other party takes away everything and tries to do everything. Weve lived now since the 90s through a period where we havent really had a stable majority party, which itself is pretty unusual. Both parties always think next time, we are going to win everything. Dont compromise now, just wait until our people get in and will be able to get everything we want. It never works that way. Congress basically sits around waiting for the next election when theyll really be able to finally do their work. I think accepting the fact that ultimately, the people you dont like arent going away. The beginning of Civil Democratic politics. Politics now premised on the idea that maybe next time, people will just go away. Thats how we approach every election cycle. The parties to this. Its completely disconnected from any understanding of what American Life looks like right now. Its a divided society that needs help coming together. I think a set of congressional reforms that try to address itself need would try to force a less majoritarian and more accommodative congress. I would not get rid of the filibuster, i would much rather have a filibuster in the house then get rid of the one in the senate because it does force you to have more than narrow majorities to get everything significant done. Those kind of changes that break down the big to, we just have these two parties that helps next time they went everything, instead tried to create dynamic coalitions that came change over time and reflect more actual concrete gated Political Society we live in. That might require some electoral reform, it would certainly require some structural reform of congress, empowering the committee, the power is much too centralized in leadership now, all of these things were done for a reason but we have to see that this is a moment when the institution is not functioning as happened in the 1940s and 70s. They need to take by the arms and make a change. Members are not there. Members of the committee, they are only 12 people in the house doing that now. There may be ten senators between the two parties who are really interested in structural reform. I think any more of them interested is essential to anything to work out. I think thats it. Thank you very much. [applause] i want to thank you all for coming tonight, we are going to have a signing at this table. The books are available at the registers, pull up your chairs and against something solid, that would be fantastic. And out of our conversations. Heres a look at authors who will be appearing soon on book tvs afterwards. Our weekly offer Interview Program that includes nonfiction books and guest interviewers. Washington times thomas weighed in on whether the United States will remain a superpower. Coming up, Deputy National security advisor, will detail her time in the trump administration. This we can on afterwards from america senior fellow argues that the latest american democracy creates more Political Parties. I think we had a multiparty in the u. S. For a long time. Contained within the two parti parties, i think what we have is more akin to a multiparty democracy with different coalitions in the twoparty democracy we have now. I think the twoparty democracy is the truly radical deviation from the american political part. I think if you look at the framers writing about, didnt like parties but what they didnt like was the twoparty system. I read madison number ten, fashions which look, the key for democracy is fluid coalition. Cap different factions done different maturities on different issues you have a democracy like its going to be in the permanent minority therefore, is not legitimate and its a permanent majority and therefore, is better opportunity to oppress the minority. That is fundamentally a vision of democracy. Artwork airs saturday 10 00 p. M