Best of: Jill Lepore: ‘Most Forms of Tyranny Do Come to an End’

I'm David Leonhart, an editorial director in New York Times' opinion, and this is America's next story, a series about the ideas that once held our country together and those that might do so again. We the people in order to form a more perfect union. Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. But America is too great for a small dream. Today I'm talking with Jill LePore, the historian and best-selling author. She has a theory about why our political systems seem so stuck, about why we used to be a country of dynamism and aren't anymore. LePore focuses on our failure to amend the Constitution. But her theory of change ends up being much broader than that. In the conversation that follows, we talk about a dream list of constitutional amendments, and about a disagreement that she has with Pete Buttigieg. We also talk about why she prefers the idea of "determination" to "hope." I found it bracingly honest. I hope you do too. It's great to have you, Jill. Thanks so much. Great to be here. I was reading your book, the word that anchored my thinking was progress. My background is mostly in covering economics. As I was thinking about this period in which we haven't changed the Constitution or our government very much over the last 50 years or so, it made me think about some aspects of our economy. I'm in my 50s, and when I think about how the economy and day-to-day life in this country have changed in my life, I actually think in many ways it's less than they changed in my grandparents' lives. I mean, my grandparents lived through the introduction of mass automobile travel. They lived through the introduction of the airplane. They lived through the introduction of birth control. I mean, they lived through real earthquakes in daily life. And your book made me wonder a little bit whether we, in certain ways, have lost the ability to imagine change of the scale that used to be normal in the United States. You know, that's really intriguing, because I think even the words we use to discuss and describe change have changed. The 18th century idea of progress really meant moral progress, moral improvement, right? The 19th century idea that replaces it is evolution, right? We become obsessed with the idea that change happens by live, organic evolution. The 20th century is really committed to economic growth, and our era is really only able, I think, to see, anticipate, and kind of index change as technological progress, or, you know, to use what was the fashionable term some years ago, disruptive innovation, right? So when you narrow an idea of progress that includes amendment, which amendment is a moral term as much as anything else, it's not just about cleaning up your pros, right? You mend your ways, you make amends, right? When you narrow, the idea of progress to the latest update on your iPhone, or do you have chat GBT-5 or 4, then you are only the objective change and never the subject of it, change happens to you, but you don't make change. So I'm always fascinated seeing in my students that if you ask them about a particular era, like they do sort of want to index it around, oh, that's when we first got our own phones or that's the year that I got to be on Facebook, or that we have just a real, I think, quite painful passivity about change being done to us and are being molded to be better and more efficiently acted upon as consumers than to think of ourselves as actively participating in the construction of a civil society as citizens. And that if we could reclaim a moral language, we could see ourselves more as actors, I think you're saying. I think that's right, and I don't mean a moralistic language. I just mean the language of care and community that is just really no part of our public discourse. There does seem to be a conundrum here, which is in some ways we are stuck, or stuck politically, we haven't amended our constitution, and yet you just look around and boy-american seem hungry for change. I mean, Barack Obama and Donald Trump don't have much in common, but they both clearly represented change, and it is curious to me that we are simultaneously living in an age when the establishment and the status quo is deeply unpopular, and we seem incapable of achieving major political change, or at least major productive political change. Yeah, I mean, so constitutional change does happen all the time. It doesn't happen by way of amendment. It happens until very recently, exclusively by way of the Supreme Court and its interpretations. We live in an era now where the president says the constitution means this, that somehow we're supposed to accept that the president has that power, which, of course, under the terms of the constitution, the president does not have that power. So let's say there isn't change happening, but I think the rhetorical move of a certain brand of conservatism is to insist that the change that it is implementing is not change, but restoration, that we are returning to a better America. That is the forward argument of make America great again, right? I think it is essentially a marketing decision to package your brand of change as a restoration. So it's not that there hasn't been a lot of change, I mean, this administration, these first months of Mr. Trump's second term, our character is by nothing so much as tumult. Right. It's chaos, you know, I remember the first time as an American historian, not the kind of person in anyone's role, a decadent, anyone called, ask a question, but someone must have said to me after the Bush v. Corp, Supreme Court decision, is this unprecedented? And I was like, well, you know, kind of not really enough, very few things are unprecedented. And I'm like, very kind of, but like we're living in a time now where I think day to day, I think you get in your, on your bicycle or in your car, you walk to work, whatever, get in the subway, every goddamn thing feels unprecedented. I mean, this is a series of conversations about what our next story might be. And very clearly we're trying to ask what might a post Trump story be. He's not going to be president forever. And I mean, you've thought about this really directly, right? One of your previous books is called The Story of America in which you investigate the changing nature of the American story. And I'm curious, how do you think about what might be a plausible story that is less dark and more hopeful and more constructive than the terrible story that Donald Trump tells, but that also resonates with the American people. Then there be a national story that is not Trump's and that people embrace. Sure. There absolutely can be, but I think defining it as oppositional to Trump's story, we dooms it from the beginning. I will tell you a story. I'm a story who likes to tell stories. So in 2016, I covered the, um, the conventions. I'd never been to the conventions. I've never been since. There was never has to go again, but there's so the Cleveland one came first through the Republicans and where Trump was nominated, and, and then there was Philadelphia, City of Love, Hillary Clinton, they're truly the opposite of one another. And so one of the ways that the Democrats had tried to play on this was there, the party of Hayden, we are the party of love. Yeah. Love Trump's hate was the sticker was the sticker is like very rainbowy. And then the night that Clinton accepted the nomination, she came out in this white, you know, suffragist, whatever. And Chelsea introduced her. She's wearing this like valentine red gown and then red and white balloons came down. And I found it to be the most reprehensible political theater I have ever seen. And that counts Trump's acceptance speech. Why do you find it reprehensible? I just thought it was the most depraved cynical manifestation of a complete failure of political imagination to think about the world of possibility that that administration might have brought about. And instead to paint your enemies as satanic is always a losing move, right? You might win an election, you will lose the whole country, you will lose your moral center to paint your political opponents as, you know, they're running on hate and we're running on love. and there really was very little. love at that convention. I will have to say. So I just think like I don't think I applaud what you're doing. I just don't think like what is the anti-Trump future story is by definition the wrong question. Oh so to me I appreciate that critique and to me the question shouldn't be anti-Trump it should be post-Trump right and and I love this line from David Axelrod that people often go looking for the remedy not the replica of a past politician. So Barack Obama was very different from George W. Bush in all kinds of obvious ways Donald Trump was very different from Barack Obama. So I don't mean to suggest that the next successful story will be anti-Trump. It should probably be Trump agnostic but it does feel like it needs to take into account Trump and yet be very different from him. Do you disagree with that? No, I don't disagree with that. I don't disagree with that. I have two things to say about it and I'm not trying to be contentious. I'm spicing up your podcast by being a disagreeable contrarian. I do a lot of performance of disagreement. I'm going to stake out a position we can argue about it but I will I had an assignment the hardest assignment of my writing life last spring. I wrote this history textbook kind of book big narrative history of thousand page history of the United States called these truths and it ends with it was going to end with Barack Obama's inauguration in January of 2009 and I was very excited to end the book there was going to be cool like almost by the time the book came out like 10 years in the past which feels very comfortable for history and you don't know what's going on in the present and as this video is a beautiful moment right like Obama don't like Obama it was triumph of of America's capacity to move beyond a past of talk human bondage and forced segregation. I was also so excited like from day one writing the book I could picture the ending it's really great and then Trump got elected and I thought well I can't really end with Barack Obama's inauguration because although that is one story of America it will it will appear to readers to be just professional negligence like as if I was a racing Trump from the story right so I somewhat hastily added a final few pages that got us through Obama's two terms all the way to election night 2016 when Trump you know wins and it was a really different ending to the story of America that this thousand-age book told and people kept saying how did you so quickly write a book that explained Trump's rise to power I was explaining Barack Obama's rise to power it's the same story like the same country elected both of those people and the same history lies behind both of those presidencies and so this spring my editor my editor asked me if I would write a new chapter because they want to put out a new edition of the book and the chapter has to run from the night that Donald Trump was elected to the end of Trump's first hundred days and you know I had like oh yeah 15,000 words you're gonna have eight illustrations you have to explain this period in American history to people that are living in it and who lived through it which is really different than trying to you know explain Abraham Lincoln or Herbert Hoover it was so hard David because it is an ongoing story it is not over but you have to kind of have an ending that could lead anywhere it has to have the sense of possibility at the close of it and I think we don't really have much of a sense of possibility right now because there is such I mean this is the author part of authoritarianism right like we are characters and someone else's story is kind of how it feels but what does that you know next chapter look like I really think it is extraordinarily hard even to hold on to the contingency of the past and the present like the the world that we're living in didn't have to be this way and that like things have gone really differently and they still could and having that sense of contingencies I think really important to I guess having a sense of authorship of your own your own life how can we reclaim a version of the American story that is patriotic and that appeals much more to the better angels of our national nature than what we've had recently I just think that many people right now are struggling to get energized by a story that has the possibility that you just alluded to they are instead drawn to much more negative stories and I don't see how we solve our problems including the kind of problems we should be solving by amending the Constitution if we can't get some of that sense of possibility back I think it's a little bit like the problem that all politics is national politics now because having a sense of purpose as a community of citizens that subscribe to a particular creed about our common life together really isn't something that most people experience nationally I was just reading about Walter Cronkite had this idea that is very David Lennhart that for the bicentennial there should be these things called American issues forums because they were all worried the bicentennial everybody had the same question right it's come out of this craze the war watergate pentagon papers Vietnam war you know Kent state like the 70s it's like the country's a mess like whereas our national purpose we have no vision now it's our anniversary then there's this you know horrible highly commodified bicentennial people are really mad about it and Walter Cronkite is like you know we need to do we're going to have I don't know it's like maybe it was even 200 issues but like there would be like in elementary schools of any evening or in public library in a city block or whatever all around the country for like 200 nights there would be debates discussions public discussions about particular issues it seems like such a cool idea actually I was like how how so I went looking a little bit to try to figure out like how did those go what did they do any good how did people experience them and they forgot to keep any records whatsoever oh my god they happened like these meetings happened and they maybe were hugely important to people I don't know but and there are to be honest there are a lot of organizations trying to stand up efforts like that for the to an America 250th in 2026 there's a lot of these organizations that call themselves bridging organizations to try to bring kind of red and blue families together for meals and outings so I don't know how that how that um scales up I've been talking to a lot of people what they're what they're trying to do for America 250 and one of the ideas was to devise a curriculum and distribute this lesson plan across the country that could be kind of done almost at any grade level which was to have kids research what their community has historically done to celebrate July 4th and like it didn't matter if your family was there from colonial days or you know you were the child of immigrants or yourself an immigrant like you're just like what did your what did your community do how has your community told the story of its belonging to this country and its national project which I thought was like a really sweet idea which just like let's just we don't have to kind of teach what is America what America should be let's just figure out right here you know um I didn't the town of Montgomery like when did we first start celebrating the July 4th and uh I think that kind of writing a story about your place in the country is maybe the easier place to begin then coming up with a you know an American story and issues and edict about what the national story is that resonates in a lot of ways I mean when you look at some of the research about what it means when a community loses its local newspaper for example yeah yeah um which is really alarming one of the things you see is that everything becomes more nationalized and you think of your neighbor mostly is is that person a Republican or a Democrat as opposed to we agree on this local issue or we're at the soccer field together and it is much easier I think for people to find common ground when they're actually dealing with other human beings rather than just being consumers of media uh essentially yeah and also our national political discourses really mediated by corporations that own those platforms whereas locally I mean it's the same corporations that put the local newspapers out of business but you know you could you can have neighborhood meetings you can physically go to the city council you can sit next to somebody and be like do you really think we should spend this money on the library well I do like you have that conversation that you know maybe it's kind of hard for you and maybe don't change your mind but that is really different than I don't know getting your news from tick-tock yeah and that kind of sense of belonging belonging is a word that Pete Buttigieg used when we when we chatted with him that if we want to repair much of what ills our country we need dick give people a better sense of belonging than they now have and you're basically pointing out that it's much easier to feel like you belong to something real and local than it is to feel like you belong to some sort of online community. Yeah, I mean, I assume you spoke to Buddha just about this, but you know, belonging has been a key term of the left, even while punishing people for their views, like the backlash against Wilkism is largely about being like, I'm really tired of everyone just telling me I don't belong because my ideas are not your ideas. So I think it's a little hard honestly to reclaim belonging because I think it's so associated with a kind of HR language. Like, I'm all about it. I believe in it, but I think the word is really, sadly, become politicized. And so is there some way that the left can fix that by actually being more welcoming and less judgmental? And even if it has to change the word from belonging to something else, can it actually embody the values of being welcoming? Or do you think that's just gone forever? No, no, no, it's not gone forever. I just kind of personal a little bit at the word because so much of what came out under that banner was shaming people for their various non-Woke views. Do you think what is what is often described as as Wilkism is a real problem as opposed to merely a problem that the right has managed to to use in other word, the left likes weaponize? No, I think I am in the belly of that beast, right? I've been teaching at Harvard since 2003. And something really changed on campus around 2014. I often talk with colleagues who are close friends about this. Like, what was it that actually changed it? But students started showing up, determined that their job in a classroom was to humiliate one another and possibly catch a professor and saying something that was a violation of what they believed to be a way you can speak or a way a thing you can say about something. This entire campus became incredibly prosecutorial, the public shaming stuff. I just think it's silly to deny that that existed, that it didn't harm a lot of people, that it wasn't wildly out of control in many occasions. Do I still like deeply believe in the mission of higher education? And that this is an institution whose value to the world in terms of its research and scholarship and the ambitions of education that it stands on. I think those are crucial and important. But I think it's just surprises me no end when people are like, well, there was really never a problem on college campuses. I don't know what college campuses they're talking about. I think the place I put blame is quite different than the places that the right would put blame. I think the corporatization of higher education has been a real problem. So I have a different understanding of what has gone wrong with higher education. But I just think the left has to admit that it has done a lot to make a lot of Americans feel like they do not belong. Yeah, and it's hard to win people over when you're making them feel that way. I want to get back to the Constitution before we close. While I was reading your book, I made a list in the back pages. I hope you don't mind that I was writing in a copy of your book about the constitutional amendments that I thought we needed today. It's like the Constitutional bucket list. Totally. And I will admit I set aside political feasibility at least in the short term. And so I don't want to ask you to go down the whole list and debate them. But I'm just curious whether what you think of this list, whether you think it's wrong headed or how you react to it. So my list was easing the amendment process. And you basically quote Antonin Scalia in the book suggesting that it has become far too hard in modern America. And what is it? Two percent of the population organized in the right way? That's what his math said. Yeah. Can defeat any amendment. That seems like a problem. Abolishing the electoral college I put on my list, putting limits on gerrymandering and changing the structure of the house of representatives. So it becomes more representative, which is in its name, putting limits on campaign donations and changing the structure of the Supreme Court to include term limits. What do you think of my list? Crazy radical, not radical enough. How does it strike you? Like your list, I'm glad that you set aside feasibility because it would have been a pretty short list if you had not done that. Yeah, I like your list a lot. I don't expect we're going to be amendment constitution anytime soon. I think it is important to imagine that it were possible. And I wouldn't be surprised if the cataclysmic political world that we live in today does create enough force to push open that door. I think it's just people are very afraid of what's on the other side of that constitutional door. And I think it's, you know what, I think if you think it could push open, you sure as heck better have a list. Because maybe it will open. Maybe it will. I've closed some of these conversations by asking about this idea of hope, which is something that you and I already touched on indirectly. But I want to go straight at it. I think so many people have have lost any sense of hope in our political system, particularly, not just it, but you know, to some extent voting for Trump is not really an act of hope. Or at least it's not entirely an act of hope. And then you have so many of Trump's critics. I think who say, oh my goodness, the fact that he's now won twice causes me to despair. And I think that we can't solve our problems unless we retain some degree of hope. And I'm curious what your deep study of American history has left you thinking about what are the rational reasons for someone in the America of 2025 to retain some hope that maybe we can again amend the Constitution, or maybe we can build a better society, a fairer society, a less unequal society than we have today. Because I both understand the despair that people feel. And I also feel that we have no hope of overcoming our problems if we give into that despair. You know, I like the word determination. I think it's important to be determined. And one way I fortify my own determination is by thinking about women first asked for the right to vote in 1848. They got it in 1920. That is the lifetimes of women, their children, their grandchildren. Often in the same family engaged in that same struggle over those generations, they were determined. There were millions of people subject to human bondage, living their lives often literally in chains who fought generation after generation. Were they hopeful? I don't think they had the luxury of being hopeful or not hopeful. They were determined. And I think forms of tyranny succeed by destroying your determination, by destroying your imagination, your ability to picture the end of something. I would say, I often say to my little, the why I'm a historian is I like to know how things begin because then I can imagine they're going to end. And I think that's one of the great gifts of history. Most forms of tyranny do come to an end. And feudalism, imperialism, fascism, dismantling these systems has required years and years and years of very hard work and determination. I'm not sure that they always required hope, but they required determination and imagination. Jill LaPore, thank you for this enlightening and honest conversation. Thanks so much. It was a lot of fun. [BLANK_AUDIO]