Transcripts For CSPAN3 Congress Political Parties Polarization 20240712

Now it is a great honor to introduce our guests. What an amazing panel. Americas most distinguished historians and scholars of congress to help us understand our current vexations. Edward ayres is president emeritus at the university of richmond. He is the author of many books on the civil war and reconstruction, including, i will highlight one of his many Award Winning books the thin light of freedom the civil war and emancipation in the part of america, which he discussed at the National Constitution center in 2017. His forthwomaning do ining book southern journey. Welcome, it is an honor to have you. My pleasure, thank you. And Joanne Freeman is 1954 graduate of Yale University and is a professor of American History and american studies at Yale University, where she specializes in the politics and political culture of the revolutionary and Early National period. She is a cohost with edward ayres of a Popular History podcast back story. She is the author of many books as well including past breakin breaking, and field of blood the road to the civil war. Its such an honor to have you with us. Thanks for having me. Norman ornstein studies politics and american elections. I love his book titles, because the next one we did at the constitution center, and it depressed us before we began the program. Its even worse than it looks, how the american constitutional system collided with the new politics of extremism and very relevant for tonight as well, the brookken branch, how congre is failing america and how to get it back on track. Hes a friend of the center and appears frequently on our programs. Norm, wonderful to have you back. Always a pleasure, jeff. Let us jump in to the history of the violence that consumed the nation in general and congress in particular in the years leading up to the civil war and joanne, well begin with you because your book field of blood describing it so vividly. The statistics are striking. You write that there were more than 70 violent incidents between congressmen in the house and Senate Chambers or on nearby streets or dueling grounds. You note it wasnt confined to congress. In july 1830 alone there were 109 riots nationwide. Is it true that there was more violence then in congress in particular and also in the nation in general than there is now . Why was it and give our audience a sense of how Violent Congress was. Sure. To answer your question first, this is an obvious thing to say, but congress is a representative institution. So it does reflect the ethos of the time and the fact of the matter is the first half of the 19th century and im sure ed will tell us the second half of the 19th century were very, very violent. Some of the violence you see in congress is representative of that moment. What i was interested in and what drew my attention was the amount of it and dynamic of it. You were discussing the years leading up to the civil war and it is worth noting that the violence, or at least the extreme violence begins in the 1830s. It is not a constant wave, it comes and goes, but its the 1830s, 1840s and 1830s that sees these incidents. If you track who is fighting who initially, you see one party fighting another and then over time you see north versus south and slavery is at the center of the fighting. What struck me as interesting most of all and what really shows violence as a tool in the Antebellum Congress is southerners knew that to a certain degree they had an advantage because they were more willing to engage in handtohand combat than some of the northerners. They used that advantage on the floor. They used it as a tool of debate and would deliberately intimidate and threaten northern congressmen. Some of them, it would silz themselv silence themselves or sit down and not stand up rather than risk the threat or being humiliated in front of the public by being threatened and having to back down before it. Violence is shocking all by itself, but what is particularly interesting is that it was a deliberate tool of debate. Over time, what happens is by the 1850s, some northerners decide it can be their tool, too. Thats such a powerful turn in the book when you describe how the decision of northerners to challenge southerners to duels actually decreased the violence and you quote from that remarkably moving letter which you say moved you to tears when representatives wade, chandler and cameron pledged to challenge future duellers to fight. You write when it became known some northern senators were to fight for we have this wonderful new exhibit. We have Thaddeus Stevenss cane, and i quote your book on how some people would run for congress during that period on the grounds that my left hook is better than the other guy. Ill beat him up because im tougher. You bring that to life so incredibly powerfully. Norman, it is often said or at least it has been said by norbert mccarthy from princeton, that we are more polarized today than at any time since the civil war. You are such an expert at party systems. Can you explain what it was about the Political Parties right before the civil war that led us to be so polarized then . So, you know, you go back through history and we see echoes of so many of the divisions that are familiar to people today. If you look to the period leading up to the civil war and the party system, it was very much in flux. We had a wig party that ultimately became basically or was transformed into the modern Republican Party. Along the way we had a Knownothing Party that was antiimmigration. The ire and the focus was on catholics, on some elements of northern europeans in part. We had a president elected on the know nothing ticket and ultimately it became the two parties we know today of at least that we think we know today, democrats and republicans. And we have that overarching issue of race and slavery. The parties struggling with that. For a while, the Democratic Party had a strong antislavery wing. We had others, copperheads, who viewed it in a different way. It shook down into a Republican Party with Abraham Lincoln, the president who became the force in the Republican Party, the force against slavery. Ed will talk about how things changed in the aftermath after the assassination of lincoln and what changed with the reconstruction period. All of those things, lifeanddeath issues to so many, really created a level of polarization in society. It broke down obviously along regional lines, and those regional divisions continued to persist, but not necessarily in the same way as the partys change. And the Democratic Party, which became a more dominant party many decades later, had a merger of southern and northern democrats. But the deep divisions that were there, the polarization of society and the parties, mccarthy is right, what were seeing now is something far more distinct than what we have seen since any period in 150 years. That is fascinating. You are teaching that the party system during the civil war period mirrored the polarization in society. Nicely very enforces joannes point that violence in congress mirrored the violence in society. Yes. Ed, your book the thin line of freedom argues powerfully at every step those who would advance freedom found themselves challenged and sometimes defeated as this history shows however black freedom advanced faster and further than its champions dreamed possible precisely because the opponents of freedom proved so powerful and aggressive. Tell us how it was that with each victory of the armies of the south provoked northern support for abolitionism and as norman invited, if you could take us through postcivil war period through reconstruction and tell us about how the party system realigned and the country became less polarized even as support for reconstruction was ultimately abandoned. As norman was saying, the polarization inside the north between the democrats and republicans during the civil war, its a fundamental fact that people tend to forget. People would say the democrats lost, they only had 47 of the vote. I think weve seen in our own time, the other half of the electorate doesnt go away when they lose. In 1864, 10,000 votes in different districts, see if that number sounds familiar, would have given the election to the democrats in 1864, after all the suffering of the civil war. We forget that had a couple battles gone differently, Abraham Lincoln might not have been reelected. That sub stratum, northern difference is there. The northern democrats were as racists as white southerners. They hated everything the republicans were doing. So the war ends. The white south says we lost. But meantime lincolns election, Andrew Johnson becomes president , he seems to cut some slack for the white south. They go great, lets push for everything we can get, lets put those codes in there to reinstitute as much slavery as possible before the republicans come back into congress. Right now theres a quiet the president is running everything. This sounds familiar, too, right . Lets do what we can with this president. When republicans come back in after riots in new orleans and memphis and widespread violence against black people across the south, republicans say we cannot have lost 350 men for this. We must restore the purpose of the war. The white south was running roughshod. The white south just keeps pushing and pushing and northern republicans say okay, it will take an amendment to the constitution that you have to support. You will have to allow black men to vote and to be delegates and rewrite the constitutions before you can come back in because you have shown us youre not sorry at all. You admit you were defeated but not that you were wrong. You had congressional permission to go out and talk to people across the south, and what they were looking for was rebelism. The spirit that even though they lost, they are still the rebels. The patterns we still see playing out today are there. Im not giving up my heritage, im holding on to this identity. As a result, you would not have had the 14th amendment if the republicans had not felt that if they did not revise the fundamental law of the land, the democrats of the north would join with the white southerners and took away what was lost in the civil war. Than the 15th amendment because, to really make sure we mean t you cant take away the vote. So reconstruction begins ending almost as soon as it begins. In virginia, it is over by 1870. Our dex book textbooks put the number 1877 in our head. But it starts in 1870, 1872, all the south is drenched in violence. The white south brings on the fundamental change in laws recognizing that if you were a native born american, you have fundamental rights. After reconstruction comes to an end, the United States settles into a pattern that will follow for a long time. Very closely contested elections with the south largely democratic, especially around the turnofthecentury, and north and the west republican. Those are the most contested, finely calibrated elections in American History. All during the period when people think nothing is happening, that its boring. In fact, a votes of a few thousand here and there could change the outcome. It is a fundamental restructuring. The commonality, polarization seems to find a way to happen whatever the situation. Winner take all, two parties, us and them, a shifting and polarizing impulse in american political culture. So interesting. Thank you for all that. What an important point that it was the fear of losing the gains of the civil war that led to the 14th amendment to want to embody in the constitution. We tell the story of the civil war exhibit about the debate, debate between Thaddeus Stevens and bingham saying, dont worry, and bingham saying no, we have to put it in the constitution. The warning that the losers may not go away fwrgracefully is prescient and sobering for today. Joanne, we have a bunch of questions from our friends. Howard green says, when northerners are willing to fight back and southerners stop challenging, is that like facing up to a bully . We also have a question about whether any members of congress were trying to reach across the aisle during this time, and a question about whether in the prewar era, were brawls most often over slavery or was slavery an unspoken catalyst . You can respond to any of those that strike you as provocative. Sure. The first question about the northerners and southerners, i would say the southerners dont stop fighting. They are just thrown off their feet in the sense, because the northerners have been caving in all along and suddenly northerners were fighting back. The word bullied thats asked in the question is right on target. That is the word people used at the time for the people provoking these fights. Bully brooks, preston brooks, who attacks charles sumner, thats his nickname. That was a word applied to these people throughout the period. There was a sense that these people before the second half of the 1850s, that the southerners were picking on people who could be bullied because they couldnt fight back in the same way. What happened is the northerners come, and the northern congressman campaigning on the idea that they would fight the slave power. There was a reality to that in congress. Congress that they meant it and they came with these weapons and literally made it clear. The document you mentioned, these three northerners explain they will now agree to duel from now on, and the part that really captured me is at the end, after describing this with all of this emotion, they say we are putting this down on paper so that future generations will understand how hard it was to fight slavery on the floor of congress. So they make clear precisely what im trying to describe in the book. It is bullying, but what happens when you are being bullied . I suppose there is a simple answer, but if you stand up to a bully, sometimes it is useful to do. I will also mention the aisle question, about whether people were reaching you can see the mere hint at a certain point that someone would reach across the aisle to someone else is sometimes meant by mockery or even theyll joke, but the joke will be, yeah, you do that and i think theres one congressman who says to another, you do that and you better tell your kids to put their sunday best on, because theyre never going to see you again. So there were some people trying. Strikingly to me, in the handful of years before the civil war, people were reaching across the aisle off the floor. They couldnt do it off the floor in the public eye with the press watching and so they removed themselves from congress or tried to do it in a separate space. But by that point, those are issues that could not be compromised. Compromise is only possible sometimes in private during the constitutional convention, you were able to forge those compromises. When everything is tweeted in realtime or when the press is watching, that is more difficult. Completely fascinating. A series of questions, Everyone Wants to talk about the present. Friends, we will, but we have to learn our history at the same time. Thats why im not jumping into your modern questions. Many of our friends are asking why isnt Congress Standing up to the president today. Bill asks, how could congress tolerate the refusal of president trumps to testify before committees. Should this behavior been punished with fines or imprisonment. We also have the question from ralph, how can congress regain its oversight of the executive branch and sarah cunningham, very first question, why is congress especially in the senate now so willing to bow to the executive. Any precedent for this combined partisanship . The process of answering those questions give us some historical context. During the civil war, it seemed, congress was more willing to stand up to the president. The Republican Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 over the republican president johnsons veto and indeed impeached him because of its distaste for his policies. Compare congresss willingness to stand up to the president then and now and why . Im going to digress a little bit, jeff, because i want to bring in a little more history. One thing i would say to set that context, theres a wonderful book called the First Congress. And the First Congress did not consistent of a lot of wonderful towering figures, other than a James Madison here or there. There were a lot of pretty mediocre people. But they all saw that they better establish this as an institution that meant something, that had respect. And they did some remarkable things, including the bill of rights, of course, because they had loyalty and if the constitution was going to work, they better get it going. To step back a little bit, the constitution was set up through those compromises to give an inordinate amount of power to the south. They knew it. It wasnt just the way that they set up apportionment, the three fifths compromise. The Electoral College, the nature of the house of representatives gave them a lot of clout and because of this, the termination to maintain slavery and in the aftermath reconstruction to make sure that they could recapture their power through Voter Suppression and the use of race. And i would remind people of one other thing, or something that most people dont realize. The house started with 65 members and it was capped in 1929 at 435. It actually didnt change in size after the 1910 census. That was because the southerners saw if they kept responding to the population by adding members, it was going to da lute their power and give more power actually to africanamericans who were emerging. They figured it out how to keep the size at 435 and use their power of redistricting and apportionment, use their ability to maintain control to basically keep blacks from having any role or significant role in the south and to keep the laws such that there wouldnt be significant civil rights which of course we didnt get until the 1960s. So theres a lot of history here we have to keep in mind. We also have to keep in mind that it was those southern democrats who in the from the 1930s all the way through really a long period of time, 40 consecutive years of power in the house of representatives for democrats, where they could build a compromised coalition with northern democrats that maintained Voter Suppression and their role in the south while giving democrats power. And in the aftermath of that as the south changed, it was the republicans who moved in, took over from southern democrats, and began to court voters in a way that also was focused around race and suppressing the power of race. So, i want to get all of that on the table. Now, what i would say about the questions that were asked directly is we have moved from polarization to tribalism and that began, i would say, much more with Newt Gingrich and his arrival in congress in 1978 and a change in our politics and a change in the Republican Party that i would believe i would say bluntly, has more of an occult now than a traditional Republican Party. And the recognition that you could end up with a president who would not behave in a fashion that put the entire country first, who might look out for his own economic interests or his familys economic interests or sub order nate the interests of the country to foreign powers for economic gain and they built in safeguards. The Electoral College was one, but prime among them was the first branch. Because it was elected independently, because it was not beholden to a president because of a belief that the members would have, what political scientists have called institutional patriotism, would provide those checks and balances. And if you have a party thats subordinates its own interests to that of a corrupt president or a cult, then youre going to lose that fundamental check. If the another one of the checks is cast to the side with a desire to fill it with people who also will have loyalties that dont match what we believe should be an independent judiciary, you lose many of those checks and balances. And weve lost a large number of them now. And the right role of the senate, for example, to use the power of confirmation, of judges and of executive officials, of congress to use the power of the purse to put some boundaries around a presidency or bad behavior by members of the executive branch, when those begin to shred, you lose control over the system and i believe frankly that thats what weve had in the last several years and its not something that i think the framers would have viewed in a positive light. Very interesting. Some powerful statements following up on what you just said. It was asked, define the difference between polarization and tribalism. I heard norm saying its the difference between a clash of ideas, which we saw at the time of the civil war and a clash of partisanship. Just very quickly, jeff, if you view the other party of worthy people, were all trying to solve problems, they just have misguided ideas, you can agree on what the problems are and then work through compromises and a political process where you can at least achieve some accomplishments along the way. If you begin to believe that the other party is a group of evil people trying to destroy your way of life, preventing them from gaining power, keeping them down, becomes the central goal and you will swallow hard and accept a number of things that otherwise would be unacceptable to you and thats where we are now and that i believe is the fundamental difference. Thats amazing. I have to ask whether you take from norms comment that people were actually less willing to recognize people of the opposite party as people of good faith today than they were at the time of the civil war which is an amazing statement. Im going to ask you to tell our friends who are watching about the really powerful website that youve helped to establish electing the house of representatives where you seek to recapture the role of congress as an equal branch of governing, studying side by side with the presidency and you have granular data about how landslide president ial wins fail to produce policy victories and you really need both congressional and president ial majorities to get sweeping legislative reforms. The fact is that political scientists in some ways are better than historians at looking over periods of time. Were good at seeing how things could have turned out different. But you can see the broad patterns. Norm mentioned that the democrats maintain control of the house in 1954 through 1994. Think about all the things that were happening in america in those years and yet the stability of partisanship. Something to think about, we dont want to glorify that. In many ways, that control, as norm said, was based on the solid south and its own kind of tribalism. So when you have just white men agreeing with other white men, if theyre not duelling each other, they can feel a kind of solidarity. Part of what were seeing now is a political system that encompasses more america which is is the way things should be. But if you think about the stability in the house of representatives for decade after decade after decade, we want to point out that was in many ways a kind of a deal in which the white south would get what it wanted being left alone with segregation for as long as possible and at the same time it would work to say before this fdr. You would have elaborate deals in which different constituencies were served. I agree with what norm is saying. All the norms that have fallen apart, so to speak, in recent times. But the fact is is that we dont want to forget that all of american politics has been built on tribal identity. It was racial for most of American History. It was made invisible by disfranchisement and suppression of voting. Were seeing that. The map that you referred to allows us to see how every Congressional District in the United States has voted from 1840 to the present. You can see which ones flip. I come from a very strange one in there, i come from the only Congressional District in the south that has voted republican since the civil war. So when people look at this later, not now, youll see in the corner of tennessee, theres one red arrow. I went to Andrew Johnson Elementary School there and we had the identity of being a republican identity. In my lifetime, to go from being republican in the 1950s meant in the south and what being republican today means are entirely different things. Its another thing that is confusing that this map helps understand. The labels youll see people today attacking democrats who want to support getting rid of confederate monuments because all those guys were democrats in the day and theyre being hypocrites. Being an democrat in the 1850s meant and what being a democrat means today are entirely different things. Being able to see the broad shifts, i dont know it gives us any confidence that theres going to be stabilization. After the great transition of the south from democrat to republican, the system has with Newt Gingrich coming in, theres a kind of disequilibrium that i think is feeding through the political system that has many origins in the social system. Fascinating. We will talk about some of those causes and donna asked, where is the website. We just posted it. Explore the link. Not now, friends, because you have to listen closely to the discussion. But afterwards. Its an amazing website and illuminating to dig into a particular Election Year and learn about it. One important thing that you raised in the civil war era and is now relevant, obviously, today to polarization is technology. And some of attributed our current polarization to a world where as youve youve argued people are more ego tore pl egger to play to their base on twitter. Talk about the role of technology and polarization throughout history beginning in the civil war period and what can we learn from it . Sure. Well, the moment that i find myself thinking about very often these days is the telegraph, the rise of the telegraph as a form of technology. Before the testify graph, there was a certain amount of wiggle room in congress that if you said something, you were sorry you said or you did something you were sorry you did, you could go to the reporter and change what you said a little bit. There was wiggle room and it was easier i think to keep things away from the public eye because there was a more limited number of reporters in washington. The telegraph changes everything. It takes away the wiggle room. Theres 45 minutes and Everybody Knows about something, all of a sudden there are all of these reporters in washington from all over the nation who can travel that far distance, stay there, and telegraph back home what it is theyre seeing. So Congress Lose control of the spin. If you think about congress ideally speaking is supposed to be an ongoing conversation between the public and their representatives in one way or another. Public says what they want. Representatives respond in some way. Theres an election and it gets readjusted. Technology changes the conversation and there are moments, i think, and right now were in the social media pseudoequivalent of the technology age. When no one quite understands the absolute give and take of that form of technology and everyone is trying is to master it and manipulate it and take advantage of it, and something happens and you can tell that no one expected that to happen. If the telegraph removed wiggle room, imagine now somebody says something goofy at a private dinner and someone has their phone and tweets it and the entire world hears it, thats, general, a generation of politicians who lose control of the conversation to a certain degree and now theyre doing that at hyper speed. Were at this moment where the conversation has changed fundamentally at a time when its highly polarized and everyone is othering everyone else. Im american and i represent america, and you, as norm put it, or evil others who cannot be dealt with, thats a dangerous time to be in this moment of hyper speed and of course its made worse by the fact we have the first president who is a tweeting president. If you think back, just to a couple of years ago, people kind of trying to figure out what that meant. If something is on a tweet, how do you take it . Is it formal or not formal . Its mindboggling the degree to which technology can fundamentally scramble the workings of democracy andic thats some of what were kind of feeling our way through right now. Technology can sort of scramble the workings of democracy is a good way to put it and were feeling our way through it in a dramatic way. Norm, how did we obviate some of the polarizations the last time around . We saw similar pressures from technology and from a fraying party system. But nevertheless we evolved to the relative stability of the post war period. And what can the lessons of that reconstruction of the madisonen model get us out of our current situation. Its not going to be easy to get out of it. Listening to joanne, theres a book called the victorian internet which is a wonderful description of how the telegraph transformed the world and many people thought it would be wonderful that we would be able to communicate face to face and wars would earned and things would change for the better. And we can see that things can change for the better but they can also change very much for the worse and you can enhance tribalism and division through that medium. I would say when we had parties that were, as it were, broader tense, which is what we had in the period really from the 1930s on, to some degree, it was there before as well, when you had in the Republican Party we used to call them when i first got to washington in 1969, we called the southern democrats bull weevils for that insect that infects cotton in the south. But we had moderate republicans from the northeast, the midwest, a lot of them anchoring the west coast which was a republican region back then, washington, oregon, california. And we called them gypsy moths for that bug that infects hardwood trees mostly in new england and the northeast. When we had this grand sorting and our parties did polarize idealogically, it created a real dilemma. We had leaders in an era that did not have the kind of populous surges, much of it until the late 1980s or the early 1990s where new media and cspan, for example, could exacerbate some of those divisions. But we had leaders who understood larger obligations here. One of the things i would say is, as we have been talking about race as this dividing issue, we would not have had those dramatic civil rights bills in 1957, 1964, 1965 without republicans, northern republicans being divisive factors. It was dirkson in the senate and the house who helped to make sure that you could overcome the southern democratic opposition to those things. But as we began to see these changes that polarized us further, the opportunity was there, exacerbated by technological change, tribal media emerging, talk radio as well as cable news with leaders who found that they could gain power and advancement by adding to this tribalism and the Business Models that worked that have had us careen out of control. Without major changes in media, thats going to be very hard to bring about, without this sense of a jolt and what i believe has happened now is, we have a Republican Party that i think is going to have to go through at least three elections in a row with losses, not just in 2020, but in 2022 again to begin to give traction back to what will be quite conservative people, but problemsolving orientation ye oriented people to begin to right the ship and move us back in a different direction. Its not going to come easily and its not going to come quickly im afraid. We have to brace ourselves for whats going to be an extended period of real challenges, trying to solve the majors problems that we have, economic, racial, and otherwise. Thank you for that sobering but important thought. Have a nice night. Exactly. Come up with another book title and well take run for your life is the next one. Im sure it will be. Ed, several of our friends in the audience are asking how big a crisis is this, do you see a path to fix the problems with congress, the Electoral College, gerrymander districts, Voter Suppression . Norm just suggested you would need a total reconception in the way that the parties relate to the media to get them to be able to begin deliberating again. Your thoughts on solutions and then i have to ask, because its such a great shoutout to your teaching abilities, william says, ed ayers was my favorite professor at the university of virginia. He says, hasnt Congress Given up its authority and created the imperial presidency theyre complaining about. Thank you for the plug. I feel its important to think about whats happening right now outside the political system thats going to have profound effects on the political system. Weve been referring, including myself, to southerners as if they were white. Black southerners have moved american politics and its most progressive ways all the time from reconstruction. Theres no 14th amendment if africanamerican people are not making it clear theyre willing to risk their lives to vote, right . Unless the testimony from the south on these telegraphs is that these people held in slavery for almost 200 years cannot wait to get into schools, to learn to read and write, reconstruction is not just republicans in the north. Its black people in the south who are putting their lives on the line to show what they would do with american freedom. Then you take the people with the least power in american society, poor africanamerican southerners after 100 years of disfranchisement and segregation, they lead the great moral revolution of the United States of the civil rights and the Voting Rights act and Civil Rights Act that followed. Thats not going to happen if they are not in the streets. Today, black lives matter is also showing, look, you have gridlock. You are all tied up and worrying about each others streets. In the meantime, were dying. Things are going to have to change. I think a more optimistic through line through these stories, the people who have been the most victimized have been the most eloquent in articulating american ideals. Think about all of this history, who would have thought just two or three years ago, that most americans would have supported weekslong protests against the police . Its the way that it was done. Its the voice that people are using. The only lesson ive been able to discover in 40 years of studying history is that nobody ever has any idea whats going to happen. Its one surprise after another. Here weve gone through this terrible period of dismay. We may be seeing the sprouts of a new era coming up. So thats before the nice words thats what i was going to say, is that we dont want to forget that along with every effort to disempower people, they have taken it upon themselves to find power in whatever way they can. And right now its to remove the symbols of the order that had held them down for so long. So theres reasons to believe that there are regenerative powers in american democracy at work even now. Can you remind me what the question was from one of my favorite students . That was a great answer to it. He was asking why doesnt Congress Stand up for itself and i think youve given some good reasons for that. I think when people know that voters have their backs, they will. And so what youre seeing is that people are developing more encourage when they know that theyre speaking for a majority of people who want justice. I think youre going to see a new progressive era thats going to be coming very soon and sustained for a long time for young people for whom the events of the last decade have been the formable experiences of their lives. Looking at cycles, theres reasons to believe that some of the things that were been worrying about may have a chance to heal themselves. Well see. Thank you for all that. Can i set it up quick. I have so many questions and i know you want to respond. We cant predict history, but we can, as youve argued so powerfully, i have to ask you are things seem less violent today than they were during the time of the civil war. The protests have been by and large peaceful and were not seeing people beat each other up in congress. Why is it that things are less violent now than they were then if that is indeed true, in your view, and ill put on the table, this big theme that Susan Coleman raises in which you used the drive to transparency, televising Committee Meetings seems to get in the way of deal making. Is there too much transparency and might the First Amendment prohibit any regulation of Media Technologies that would allow the kind of moderation and compromise that madison expected . Ill start with the theres a lot there. There is a lot there. I might have to ask you to remind me. The beginning was its less violent and why is it less violent now . Part of that in a sense is a very clear answer and that is the United States in 2020 is not the United States in 1855 when during elections you routinely had People Killed at polling places and, you know theres an incident in washington in which a cannon is shot off at immigrants at a polling place. There was a level of routine violence that was very different. In part, were in a different moment and we are seeing i think more violence and more threatening behavior than typically we might expect to see. I think thats part of what people are responding to. I think some of it is being encouraged and thats why its there. In one way or another, i think, yes, we are less violent but, yeah, were also seeing a lot of extreme language and a lot of extreme behavior that goes beyond where i think we would be comfortable with under normal circumstances. As far as transparency goes, you know, thats the eternal problem is transparency seemingly on the surface of it is good. We can all see whats happening. Just as you suggested, and just as my book discusses, when things happen in front of the public eye that complicates them enormously so how do you balance the need to work behind the scenes to maneuver things and bring it forward to present it in a way that the public is still responsible, i dont have a simple answer for that. I just think that thats one of the fundamental questions of balance in politics generally but particularly in congress which is so bound up with public opinion. You asked a questisecond questi there, i think, which i have now forgotten. Do you remember it or else ill go back to say what i said before. Pull away and i think this is the last round. Closing thoughts for our friends as well. Okay. So, you know, norm was talking about run for your lives. Were at this moment where many bad distribution have happened and might happen and to fight our way out of them its going to take a lot of time and work. Ed was talking about the possible booming of new kinds of progressive change and i suppose the way i think about this is, during moments of extreme, intense change and unstable behavior as ed said, we have no idea whats going to happen. We dont know if its all going to go down, were circling the drain, we dont know if its all going to be okay. And i dont think we can assume yet either one. What that means is, as unstable as things feel now, theres room for change. And so what matters now is what we do with this moment, right . How we respond to whats going on now, how we realize the fact that whats happening now, things are changing. We dont know whats going to happen. Theres room for growth in addition to collapse. And i suppose the way i join them together is just to encourage people to realize that its vitally important that people think about this moment and its importance, let their thoughts be known. Some of what were seeing now is a great sign of that. But its important for people to realize that they can help bring change and that things arent absolutely over with. Thats a wonderfully important note. People can influence change as you just said so powerfully and thank you for bringing things together so well. Norm, your closing thoughts. I wont presume to shape them. What would you like our friends to leave from this discussion . So, a couple of things, jeff. One is, we can do some things structurally, difficult as they may be. I was just a part of an American Academic academic of arts and sciences of the common good and we have a list of things we can do that include larging the house of representatives, altering the Electoral College, bringing us a form of the akin to the australian system of mandatory assistance at the polls. There are things that could be done that would improve elections and the institutions. But i also leave you with another challenge that we have. I agree with ed that we have so many positive things happening now including i think a wider awakening among many white americans that have been ignored for so long, that minneapolis and others have set out, that black lives matter is a meaningful phrase, not something to just push to the side or ignore. And i think the immigration struggles taken us back to understanding what it means to have a larger and better society. But the institutions that were built by the framers are going to be more distorted as time passes and it has nothing to do with donald trump. By 2040, 70 of americans will live in 15 of our 50 states. 50 of americans in 8 states. That means the Electoral College is going to have more instances if we keep it where the winner of the popular vote loses the presidency. And it means that 30 of americans who do not reflect the diversity and economic differences of the country will elect 70 of the senators. And we know residential patterns as well as the way we do districts and a Supreme Court that basically brushed aside doing anything about partisan gerrymandering will distort the house even further. What voters want wont be reflected there and the courts are going to take us further and further away from popular will, whatever it is, with those elections. Were going to have some work to do to prevent a real crisis in the system that goes beyond some of these issues that weve talked about and even transcends some of these deeper divisions along racial and ethnic and regional lines. Thank you very much for that and for sobering us in such a powerful way. Ed, the last word is to you. The era of the American Civil War and emancipation remind us that things far worse than we could imagine can happen and things far better than we imagine can happen. Slavery coming to an end was something that people could not plan for. The other thing i would say as i read this wonderful report that norm referred to, the final part of that after all of these very impressive structural changes is the civic culture of the country, its what youre doing right now. It matters what we are thinking and saying and talking to each other and weve got to keep that alive too. Whatever the election cycle brings us, we have to keep the civic culture of democracy alive. Thats what i think. Thank you so much for that. Its an important reminder. It does matter what we say and talk and do. And the fact that all of you are taking an hour in the middle of your busy evenings, hundreds of you coming to ask such Great Questions and hanging on our every word as i can see in the chat box is a reminder that when we come together to learn with reason, we can indeed appeal to the better angels and Grow Together in wisdom. Im so grateful to all of you for having spread so much historical and constitutional light. On behalf of the National Constitution center, youthank y so much for a wonderful discussion. See you on june 30th for the battle of the constitution and the future of policing. Thanks to all. Have a good night. Thank you so much. Youre watching American History tv. Every weekend on cspan3, explore our nations past. Cspan3, created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Tonight a look at programs from the Kansas City Public Library in kansas city, missouri. We begin with a talk about the life of Millicent Patrick. Mali omeara will discuss her book life of hollywood artist Millicent Patrick and watch American History tv this weekend and every weekend on cspan3. Cspan has unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the Supreme Court and Public Policy events. You can watch all of cspans Public Affairs programming on television, online or len