The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University hosted “Democracy 250: Myth, Memory and the American Story” on July 30 as part of the Ash Center’s Democracy 250 series. Moderated by journalist and political commentator Eugene Scott, the panel featured presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky and historian Leah Wright, who discussed how history has shaped American identity, perceptions of the U.S. democratic system and civic engagement.
This selected Q&A captures only a portion of the one-hour webinar. Watch the full discussion here.
Q: I want to start with young people. We have college campuses represented here, and I’ve been thinking about how college students are processing this moment…[What are] your thoughts on how the next generation of voters is engaging with this period and commemorating the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding?
LEAH WRIGHT: Young people, especially on college campuses, have noticed an explosion in the number of students who want to have historical grounding…And just the interest in students participating in this and wanting to know the very basic and foundational aspects. And we’re not just talking about the founding era, and I think Lindsay can weigh in on this as well, or the revolutionary era or things like that, although there’s been an explosion in that as well. They want to know about the French philosophers who are coming over and writing about the grounding and the foundation of the concepts of democracy.
LINDSAY CHEVINSKY: For the younger generation, I’m seeing not apathy, which is great because actually apathy is the enemy. Displeasure or unhappiness is not the problem. It’s when people stop caring and that’s really the problem.
Q: Do you believe that the U.S. is still viewed as a democratic model around the world? Do other democracies – and people in nondemocratic countries who aspire to democracy, still look to the U.S. as an example right now?
LINDSEY CHEVINSKY: Well, I’m going to give sort of a multifaceted answer, which is that I think that our foundational principles, which I see as articulated in the Declaration of Independence and then given life in the Constitution, albeit imperfectly, have been an inspiration to nations for centuries. So many different generations of revolutions have quoted and repeated their own version of the Declaration of Independence. So that continues to be an inspiration. I also think that other democracies desperately want the United States to be a strong democracy. They desperately want us to be a model for them to aspire to because it is better for them and it is better for the world when we are acting with our democratic principles at the forefront.
LEAH WRIGHT: I’ll just jump in here and say to Lindsay’s point, the United States has dropped precipitously on the democracy index, the global democracy index. Yeah, we’re now considered democracy is endangered within the United States. And I think that should be a wake-up call for all of us. I do think that authoritarianism is on the rise globally, that this is not just a U.S.-specific or we can’t be U.S. essentialism or exceptionalism in this moment exceptionally, but it’s part of a larger grouping or a larger pattern of shifting world changes that these global countries, including the U.S., that has seen itself as a leader on democracy for so many years that we are just completely unprepared for.
Q: How can we figure out a way to speak about the country honestly and in its fullness while maintaining hope about what is even possible?
LEAH WRIGHT: I think one of the best things that has really come out of this country is the way that our institutions, our public federal institutions have documented and become timekeepers, essentially, storytellers based in evidence and fact around the nation’s history…What I think that they do really quite beautifully is they tell hard histories. They tell the unvarnished truth. They tell our stories, and there’s been a lot of work to get to that point. But this is why we have the Museum of American History. This is why we have the Smithsonian. This why we have the Museum of African American History and Culture. But the detractors say, “Well, you spend a lot of time talking about the negative.” They don’t pay any attention to the story of resilience that every single one of these museums and spaces tell because that is part of the American story. So, if you go into the National Museum of African American History and Culture, yes, you will find the story of slavery, but you’ll also find the story of freedom, of independence, of success.
…How can you not be hopeful about America after hearing this story and hearing about how people have persevered, how they have managed to succeed in hostility and against all odds? To me, if we allow it to be, and this is what these museums and these institutions and these historical sites do, they tell that story.
LINDSAY CHEVINSKY: For me, I think I have two approaches. One is by shifting how we tell the founding story of one of innovation and experimentation rather than this genius that was handed down from high above the thing. By teaching it in an innovative way, what we’re saying is changing or evolving or amending therefore their creation is not criticism. It’s embodying that spirit. It is actually upholding the founding legacy of constantly trying new things. So it is a deeply patriotic message to say, how can we try and create a more perfect union? Because that was the charge handed down to us. And so I really try and present that as a deeply patriotic way of thinking about this story.
The second piece is we really can’t view human beings as Excel spreadsheets because we’re not. And so you can’t, no matter how much you try, you cannot balance. There are some people who are obviously evil and there are people who are probably more fundamentally good than others, but most of us have light and dark in us. And so we have to share the full story. We have to tell the full story. And that is actually a much more useful story because if deeply flawed people like George Washington or James Madison can still create and produce extraordinary things, then that means that we don’t have to look for perfection today. Because if we did, we would be sorely disappointed by what we find. Instead, we can accept that there are deeply flawed people around us that are still capable of producing extraordinary things.
Eugene Scott is an award-winning journalist and host at Axios Live, where he interviews political, policy, and business leaders. He is also a senior advisor at Harvard’s Institute of Politics and a former national political reporter for The Washington Post.
The views expressed in this article are those of the interviewees alone and do not necessarily represent the positions of the Ash Center or its affiliates.
